


Gather Ye Rosebuds

by LavenderProse



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Best Friends, Friends With Benefits, I Love You, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Penis In Vagina Sex, Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sharing Clothes, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Trans Steve Rogers, Unrequited Love, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-03-21 05:58:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3680574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderProse/pseuds/LavenderProse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex, kissing, painting, friendship, loss and love. Not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story, despite being one third of the length, took me three times as long to write as All Those Things. Mostly because I found myself editing and reediting my portrayal of Steve as trans in this fic.
> 
> I have a lot of headcanons on the subject, some of which are in this fic and a lot of others that I won't bore you with here. I wanted to make it clear that I am cis and, while I kept my trans audience as close to my mind as at all possible while I was writing this fic, I realize that I am very likely to make mistakes. You are free to point out any mistakes I make (in fact; I ask that you please do) in either the comments on this fic, or on Tumblr where I have a blog under the same username.
> 
> There is an extensive list of warnings for this fic, most of which I put in the tags but which I've elaborated on in the end note of the chapters they occur in, mostly spoiler-free. Specifically, the issue of the PIV sex which will be portrayed in the third and fifth chapters. Here I'll be honest with you: Due to my own issues, both physical and simply preferential, I have an aversion to PIV sex. However, I'm clearly not going to be triggered by it how some of my readers--especially my trans readers--may be. There will be extensive warnings in the chapters containing it. 
> 
> There will be five chapters of this fic. Three will be explicit.
> 
> **IMPORTANT** : If you are reading on mobile, please click the button on the top that says "Hide Creator Style." If you don't, the beginning of this chapter will appear incredibly strange.

" _Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,  
__Old Time is still a-flying;  
__And this same flower that smiles today  
__Tomorrow will be dying._ "

"To The Virgins, to Make Much of Time" - Robert Herrick

* * *

The new apartment is a dump, to be honest, but Steve is proud of it even if the paint is peeling slowly off the walls and the cabinets in the kitchen look like they're one vigorous slam away from crumbling into dust. He sits on the floor surrounded by his life in boxes, smirking as he digs through one looking for a particular CD.

"You know," Bucky says, "if, uh, if you ever decide that you… _don't_ want to live in student subsidized housing, you're welcome to move in with Nat and I—"

Steve sighs as he drops another rejected CD on the pile by his left knee. "I keep tellin' you, Buck. That's not a good idea."

"Why _not_?"

"Because…" Steve sighs, shrugs one slim shoulder. "We've been living in each other's pockets for our entire lives and I wanna have something that's _just_ mine, alright? It doesn't mean that I don't…love you, or wanna be around you. It just means that I need to be on my own. With myself. For awhile." He finds the CD he's looking for—Ella Fitzgerald, _Pure Ella—_ and stretches across the floor to the CD player. It should say something about Steve that he's the only person Bucky knows under the age of thirty who still has a collection of CDs and a player rather than an ITunes library and a dock, but if it does he isn't sure what.

"I get that, and I respect that, and I understand wanting to be on your own after living with Thor and Jane for so long because, yeah, let's face it, neither of them knows the definition of _privacy_." Steve smirks. He lived with Thor and Jane for just under two years and was walked in on in the shower at least once a week. Personally, Bucky thinks it's because Thor actually never learned that personal space was a thing and Jane is too _spacey_ to respect space, but Steve enjoyed his time living with them. In light of their wedding, Steve figured it was time to pack up this things and get out—though neither Thor or Jane would ever think about kicking him out. "But couldn't you put off the One Man Band game until you had the _money_ to live on your own?" He steps through the minefield of boxes to stand next to Steve and the CD player.

"I _have_ the money. Rent on this place is 450 a month plus utilities and right now I'm making 500 every two weeks, plus commissions. I have the money."

"Yeah, but this place is practically _condemned_ —"

Steve scoffs as he turns on the CD player. Ella Fitzgerald's smoky voice fills the room, crooning quiet and gentle. Steve unfolds himself from the floor and stands up, turns around and plants his hand on his hips. He's soft and sweetly rumpled, red jeans and beige sweater and one of those knit caps covering the majority of his golden blond hair. His feet are in thick grey socks that hide the shape of his ankles. Bucky knows from experience that he can wrap his hand, index finger to thumb, around those thin ankles.

"Could you just for _once_ be supportive of my life choices?"

"Aw, c'mon Stevie. It ain't like that and you know it. I'm plenty supportive—"

"Right, sorry, I misinterpreted your blatant skepticism of my major, my job and my living arrangements; you're actually _super_ supportive and I'm in the wrong here—"

" _Steve._ "

" _Bucky_."

"I'm just sayin'," Bucky says, shrugging aggressively and turning to one of the two tiny windows Steve has in this decrepit shoebox. One of them has a great view of the brick wall belonging to the building next door, the other overlooks a dumpster. "I don't understand why you're insisting on living in squalor when you've got…when you've fuckin' got _friends_ , Steve."

Steve groans out loud, high and rough, and runs both hands through his hair. "Because, Bucky! Because—you really wanna know? It's because we're fucking. We're fucking and I can't fuck you _and_ live with you _and_ hang out with you all the time because then it's too much like a relationship and I just—I can't right now, okay? I need a relationship like a need a hole in the head and we'll just both be miserable." He sighs, frustrated either at himself or Bucky, and nudges the CD player with his foot. "So if you really want me to move in with you, fine. But the fucking'll have to stop."

Bucky breathes out through his teeth. "What kinda ultimatum is that?"

"The one I just gave you," Steve says unhelpfully. He picks up a box at random and hauls it up onto the kitchen counter. It rattles. He rips the packing tape off without ceremony, pulls the flaps of the box up and starts rooting around. The box is one of about six labeled _MISC_., and Bucky doesn't know what's in any of them, but Steve is pulling out photograph after photograph and dropping them onto the counter. It grinds Bucky's gears that almost every photograph is of the two of them, even though Steve probably couldn't have done that on purpose.

Tense silence permeates the room until Steve has the entire box unpacked. He stares at the pile of photographs on the counter, some of them going as far back as elementary school. When Bucky looks at them, he almost laughs because of how things have changed. Fuck, but things have changed. This friendship has gotten more complicated with each passing year but it's still the best thing he's got going. Steve is still sometimes the only reason he doesn't pack his entire life into his truck and take off for greener pastures.

Even as he's staring at a picture of them as they were fifteen years ago, innocent and sweet and missing-toothed, Steve says, "If I was in trouble, I'd tell you. You know I would. If I really couldn't afford to live on my own—if I wasn't willing to _sacrifice_ a bit of comfort for my own privacy—I wouldn't stand on my own stubbornness. But that's not how it is, and I…you're my best friend. I like hanging out with you and I _really_ like having sex with you. And yeah, I know we could both live without that, but I didn't want to make you chose like that."

Bucky frowns. "You don't think I'd chose puttin' a roof over your head over putting my—"

"I'm _saying_ that I'm not going to make you choose." Steve pulls the box off the counter, deconstructs it with tight movements, and drops it onto the short pile already by the door. "My mind's made up. So you can either help me unload, or…"

"Or?" Bucky prompts, hoping the other option is not _get out_.

"Or…" Steve turns around, bottom lip trapped between his teeth. It's an expression that means he's trying not to grin, trying not to let some filthy expression crawl onto his face. "You can help me _unload_."

Bucky groans, not entirely because his cock twitches in his trousers. "That was horrible."

Steve grins, steps closer over boxes and moving day detritus. "Yeah, I know, but my horrible sex-talk makes you hot."

"Does not."

"Does too." Steve hooks his fingers into Bucky's belt loops, tugs him bodily closer. "Don't even try to lie to me, Bucky Barnes. I've known you your entire life." He snaps open the button and flicks his wrist to pull down the zipper with the same movement. The release of pressure only encourages Bucky's erection to swell further. "I know that you like blond twinks and bad sex-talk. I was _there_ when you realized you liked blond twinks and bad sex-talk." He pops up onto his toes, dips his hand between Bucky's legs. "'s why this is such a good thing. I know what you need, you know what I need. It's very…symbiotic." Bucky groans and Steve smirks with low-lidded eyes and a satisfied hum, sinks to his knees and pulls Bucky's jeans down.

Steve blows him, blond head bobbing up and down, very perfunctory. Steve has this thing about sex that's a lot like most people with food. Sometimes, it's your birthday and your friends take you out to Benihana and you gorge yourself on sushi. Most of the time, you're hungry and you microwave a shitty frozen burrito. Bucky is fine being the shitty frozen burrito of Steve's life. Sushi is nice and all that, but Benihana isn't what you trust will be in your fridge when you need it. Shitty frozen burritos are reliable and they're always there for you, and you don't have to get dressed up or spend a lot of money to eat them.

When Steve is done, he spits into the sink and ducks his head under the faucet to get a mouthful of water. Bucky comes up behind him and shoves a hand down his pants. When he comes with knuckles white on the counter, he throws his head back against Bucky's shoulder, mouth open and eyes squeezed closed. Bucky wants to kiss him, but doesn't.

They don't kiss. It's not something they do, because somehow Bucky can still maintain friendly distance when he knows the taste of Steve's orgasm, can still see him as the guy he grew up with when he knows the sound he makes when he comes, but kissing him, the knowledge of what that pink, plump mouth tastes like would change things in a way he's not prepared for.

"Ugh," Steve mutters. Bucky hears his hard swallow like surround sound. "You couldn't have waited for me to get my pants off? Now I'm wet. Let me go, I've gotta unpack some new pants."

"Hey, you weren't complaining while it was happening," Bucky snorts. What he doesn't say is _I like it when you're wet._ What he doesn't do is lick Steve's sweet-musky wetness off his hand.

He rinses off his hand under the faucet as Steve ducks under his arm, jaunts awkwardly into the living area to find one of his several clothing boxes. Despite his complaining, he seems to know exactly which box holds his pants. Not two minutes pass before Steve finds a pair of pants—sweatpants, loose and grey—and strips of his soiled jeans and underwear. Bucky leans against the counter and forces himself to watch because Steve doesn't expect him to respect his modesty, and to do so would be odd. Forces himself not to feel anything but friendly affection as Steve strips from the waist down, scrubs between his legs with his shucked underwear and pulls on the sweatpants. He almost succeeds.

"I'm actually gonna get going," Bucky says, pushing away from the counter. "I promised Nat I'd make dinner and it's getting late. I'll be back over tomorrow, though, so don't think you have to unpack everything on your own."

"Yeah, that's fine." Steve sits back down in front of the CD player and turns off Ella, starts searching through his CDs again. "Thanks for helping me get everything up here."

"No problem." He walks by Steve on his way out the door. The urge to kiss him rises again, so sudden that he has to pause and breathe, harsh, out his nose until the urge passes. He reaches down, runs a hand through Steve's hair. Says, "See ya," and is out the door.

* * *

Initiative is a more tolerable club than most. They have a dress code that requires shirts and shoes and the music they play is not solely thumping bass and wild synthesizer. They've even been known to play slower songs earlier in the evening, before the party hard crowd arrives. Most times, they get there on the cusp. Things are warming up but not yet sloppy, the songs are loud but have a nice beat and the dancing is still just on the acceptable side of raunchy.

Tonight, they're showing around an old friend of Steve's, a guy he met on study abroad in Italy several years ago, named Sam, visiting from D.C.. From what Steve's said, Sam is getting restless in D.C. for some ambiguous reason that he doesn't go very far into detail about, and is seriously considering moving either to New York or back to his hometown of Atlanta. Steve, like any good friend who also happens to be a New Yorker, is putting in his bid for the Big Apple and has spent the weekend giving Sam the New York Tricks and Treats Tour, or whatever Steve is calling it this week.

Bucky meets them with Natasha and Clint in tow about two blocks from Initiative. Sam is tall, dark and gorgeous with a huge smile that makes Bucky's heart tug, just a little. He has a strong handshake and big hands and Bucky barely keeps himself from shivering all over when he thinks about how good they'd feel all over his body. He half considers asking Steve if Sam would be DTF—very subtly, of course; he's not an animal, despite what Nat likes to say when he leaves the toilet seat up—until he looks at Steve and every molecule in his body is simultaneously saying _Sam who?_

Steve is wearing a tight, white little T-shirt underneath a thin blue hooded zip-up, unzipped with the hood pulled up over his styled-disheveled hair. His jeans are tight and faded almost-white. Bucky knows these jeans, has known them since Steve bought them when they were much younger and they were loose around Steve's thighs. Now they're practically painted on and, Bucky knows from experience, butter-soft under the fingers. He's several inches taller for the red boots he's wearing, heavy and climbing up until terminating at the thickest part of his calves. They're what Bucky refers to, privately and in his own head, as Steve's Fuck Me Boots.

"Hey," Bucky says softly, shoving his hands in his pockets just to have something to do with them.

"Hey," Steve says. He's framed his eyes with black liner and—dear God, _mascara_? Bucky thinks he's having heart palpitations.

This is how he dies. Bucky Barnes, here he lies; killed by his best friend's baby blues.

"So you're Bucky, huh?" Sam says, interrupting his thoughts. Bucky jerks himself, looks back to Sam and nods. "Heard a lot about you, man."

Bucky grins back. "Only good things, I hope."

"Actually, I expected you to be a seven-foot-tall chain smoker with a knife collection, but I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised."

"Oh?" Bucky glances at Steve. "Is that what he says about me?"

"You're stupidly tall, you smoke a lot and you _do_ have a knife collection—"

"I'm five eleven! In what universe is that _stupidly tall_? If anything you're _stupidly short_."

"Children." Natasha plants a hand on either of their chests, fixes each of them with a glare—which, on second thought, _that_ might be how he dies; repeated exposure to his roommate's glower. "If you want to stay here and argue, more power to you, but Clint and I—and Sam, if he wants—are going clubbing with or without you." She looks to Sam, drops her hands and gives him a small smile. "Hey. I'm Natasha."

"Hey," Sam says. They shake hands. "What's, uh, what's the accent? If you don't mind me asking."

"Russian," she says easily. "I was born in St. Petersburg."

"Oh, nice. So you speak Russian?"

In response, a stream of Russian flows from Natasha's mouth. Bucky listens, and even though all she says is _I do; I lived in Russia until I was thirteen_ , Bucky can't help but mess with the others just a little, because it's so much fun. Steve likes to carry on with Gabe and Jacque in French and they're always glancing over at him and giggling. Some payback is long overdue.

" _You could have said anything to him just now_ ," Bucky says, nudging her with his elbow. Relishes the looks of confusion and, in Steve's case, irritation.

Natasha turns her nasty smirk onto him, an unpleasant expression that means she's about three seconds away from literally pummeling him into the ground. She says, " _I enjoy flirting more when it's two-sided. You should try it sometime._ "

"The fuck's that supposed to mean?" he demands, in English this time because he can't put the proper feeling into the sentence while speaking Russian. Natasha rolls her eyes, takes Clint by the elbow and drags him off. Steve is too busy laughing to follow right away, and Sam is just standing there with a good-humored, bemused grin on his face, wide and white.

"Are you Russian too?" he chuckles.

"I was, in college," Bucky responds. Steve rolls his eyes.

"Bucky took a Russian studies minor," Steve says, jabbing him with a bony elbow. Bucky swats him away with a barely-there gesture that probably wouldn't injure a fly.

"Sounds like fun," Sam says, and he can't even make it sound genuine. He knows it too, because he glances over at Bucky, winces in apology. "Sorry, man. I read _Crime and Punishment_ in high school and I almost ate the damn thing out of boredom. But to each their own."

"It's cool," Bucky says. "Dostoyevsky can be…dense. I prefer it in Russian, but a lot of Russian speakers prefer it in English, so it's six to one, half a dozen t'other."

"Wow. If I wanted to listen to someone recite idioms, I'd go visit my grandma in Ireland," Steve says. He's just playing—Steve loves his grandma like she personally created the universe and everything in it, was heartbroken when she moved back to Ireland—but Bucky still grabs him by the neck and grinds his knuckles into that blond head. Sam just laughs, one of the gang after only ten minutes, and Steve groans and roars until Bucky lets go. His hood has fallen off and there is _glitter_ in this punk's hair. Bucky can't even deal.

The others are almost a block away now, barely visible through the glare and smog of Brooklyn at night. Bucky starts drifting in that direction, expecting the others to follow him, and doesn't throw an arm over Steve's shoulders even though he wants to. Steve is probably looking for someone to hook up with tonight, dressed like that, and Bucky isn't going to ruin it for him by displaying any kind of quasi-possessive behavior.

Steve stomps ahead of Bucky and Sam, his boots clomping on the sidewalk and drawing attention to them wherever he goes. He turns back every once in awhile, hair in his face and smirk never far from his lips. By the time they reach the club, his hair is windblown and his cheeks are red. The others have already commandeered a table and retrieved beers. Their group has apparently grown to include Jane and Darcy, which means it's probably Thor's night tending the bar. Bucky likes this possibility because Thor is generous with his family and friends discount.

"Gonna go get a drink," Steve says. He takes off his sweatshirt and hands it to Bucky.

"Get me one too—something cheap and nasty," Bucky says. He drops Steve's jacket onto the booth bench and slides in next to it, looks up at him with all the sweetness he can muster. "Pay you back tomorrow, promise."

"You better," Steve mutters, but he doesn't sound pissed off about it. He wanders off and Bucky watches him go, tries not to stare at his ass.

"So how long have you two been together?" Sam asks, sliding into the booth next to Natasha. He's already introduced himself to Jane and Darcy and is falling victim to Darcy's hungry stares and Jane's wide-eyed observation.

"Who?"

"You and Steve."

Bucky snorts. "Uh…twenty years, give or take?"

Sam furrows his brows, shakes his head. "Sorry?"

"More precisely, twenty…twoish years. Long enough that neither of us can remember when we met, anyway." Neither of them could have been more than three, stuck in the same daycare playpen while their mothers nursed elsewhere in the hospital. He knows that Steve has always just _been there_ , as inextricable from his memories as the backs of his own hands.

"No, man. I know you guys have _known_ each other a long time," Sam says, shaking his head. "But how long have you been _together_? Steve talks about you all the time, man, but he's never mentioned when you started dating."

"Oh." Bucky sits there for a moment, stunned because he's not sure where Sam got the idea that he and Steve are _together_. "Uh…we're not. I mean, Steve and I aren't dating. We're just…friends."

"With benefits," Nat says, because she's incapable of keeping her mouth shut when it doesn't benefit her directly and personally. Sam turns intrigued eyes onto her, and Bucky hopes that his glare is drilling a slow, painful hole in the center of her forehead. He doesn't think it is, though, because she fixes him with a look that oozes exasperation. She says, "Don't look at me like that. The entire neighborhood knows that you two are fucking."

"You know, Nat…you're the reason I can't have nice things." He sits back, eyebrows raised. "It's not our fault we're having more sex than you." Sam laughs, which probably means that he doesn't care what Steve and Bucky's arrangement is as long as it makes them happy.

Bucky probably knows just as much about Sam as Sam knows about him; knows Sam is finishing up a masters degree in psychology in the spring and will be moving onto a doctorate program after that. He's a good guy, and Bucky is still trying to figure out if Steve is trying to hit that, still isn't exactly sure that Steve hitting that is not the point of the night—Steve's Fuck Me Boots only make an appearance once in a blue moon—and he's not trying to throw a cog into whatever gears Steve is trying to grind, but when Nat gets like this it annoys the ever-loving fuck out of him.

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Please, I'm the _only_ reason you have nice things." She crosses her arm, purple-tipped fingers of her left  hand cradling her wine glass. "You two hooking up tonight?"

"Steve has glitter in his hair and mascara on his eyelashes. If Steve isn't planning to have sex tonight, then everything I know about the guy is wrong."

"Right, but I wouldn't go thinking that the glitter and the mascara are for you, haus," Darcy says, leaning across Jane's lap to get right in his face. Darcy has forgotten more about astrophysics than Bucky will ever learn but she also seems to have forgotten the definition of personal space, so he doesn't let himself be intimidated by her—even if the shade of lipstick she wears is called _Cannibal_. "From what I've heard, you're never more than a text away from gettin' some of that sweet, sweet—"

"Darcy," Jane warns, because her barometer for lewd and inappropriate things is finely tuned to Darcy's frequency.

"Steve isn't _easy_ ," Bucky protests, even though he has no less than six texts currently in his phone that all read as some variation on the same basic booty call. _Want to hook up? I'm horny, come over_. Bucky has trained himself not to react to these any differently than he would Steve's equally as common texts of _Want to get something to eat after class?_ or _Come over and watch netflix?_ He knows that he can respond to the booty calls the same way he would the invitations to dinner; a text of _sorry I cant I have_ ( _a proposal to write/plans/haven't slept in 48 hours)_ and Steve's response will also the be the same: _D: alright another time then._ Bucky isn't sure what all that says about his life, other than he _really_ needs to start deleting some of his texts.

"No, right, but my point is: why would he get all dressed up for you all he has to do to get you on your knees is say _down boy_?" Darcy gives him that blood red smirk of hers that means she _knows_ she has a point, and Bucky wants to protest but knows he can't.

"You know what—you're just—where's Steve? He's taking forever with those drinks." He gets up and barely restrains himself from sprinting away, and he's frustrated by Darcy's laughter behind him, but he doesn't even know why. It's not like he's defending Steve's honor or that Steve needs his honor defended—Darcy is a friend, would never imply that Steve was any sort of slut or even that there would be something wrong with him if he _were_. It frustrates him for reasons he cannot even begin to put a finger on and, for that, it frustrates him all the more.

Steve is standing at the bar with some guy—tall and muscular, kind of rugged-looking, definitely Steve's _type_. The first thing he processes is their proximity, and he immediately starts to back off—this is why Steve is being slow with the drinks; he's gotten his answers, time to retreat. He happens to catch Steve's eyes through a hole in the crowd and tries to make it obvious that he's getting out of dodge. Steve keeps staring. It takes Bucky longer than it really should to realize that his best friend is broadcasting an _SOS_ message so loudly that it can probably be heard in Portland.

It's easy to slide through the crowd after that, to reach Steve's side and curl a hand around his waist. "There you are. Been wondering where you got off to."

"Yeah, sorry," Steve says. He turns effortlessly into Bucky's grip, tilts his face up and favors him with a smile that somehow manages to radiate devotion. "I got distracted. Uh, this is…Brent."

"Brock," the guy corrects. Doesn't hold out his hand to shake, so Bucky doesn't either. He says, "You didn't say you had a boyfriend."

"You never asked," Steve says pleasantly, reaching up to his own waist, grabbing Bucky's hand and _squeezing_. There's a moment of awkwardness, a pregnant pause into which Bucky grimaces and Steve maintains this pleasant expression that is just barely shot through with thin traces of homicide.

Bucky says, "Did you order the drinks, or…?"

"I've actually spent the last five minutes trying to turn down Brent's generous offer of buying my drink for me," Steve says, still making direct eye contact with the guy. If Bucky isn't mistaken, he's starting to sweat under his collar just a bit. "He won't take no for an answer. A true good Samaritan."

"Are you his boyfriend?" Brock asks belligerently, giving Bucky this bobbing pigeon-headed look of unsuccessful intimidation.

"Looks like it, huh?" Bucky says. Looking around Brock's hulking figure, he spies the bartender; not Thor, but some redhead Bucky's never seen before. He says, "Look, just forget the drinks, c'mon." He's getting nervous, because Steve has that _look_ on his face, tight and drawn up like a dog before it bites.

"You can't possibly be that eager to spend your money, can you Brent?"

"Brock." He's looking pissed off now, and he's exactly the kind of guy who wouldn't have any qualms about starting a fist fight in the middle of a crowded club. Bucky loops two fingers into Steve's backmost belt loop in preparation for dragging him away by the seat of his pants, like a parent with a misbehaving toddler, if the need arises.

" _Whatever_. Why do you want to buy my drink for me so badly, huh? Why did I have to tell you four times that I could pay for it myself—that I _wanted_ to pay for it myself—before you backed off? Actually, sorry, why did I have to get my _boyfriend_ over here before you backed off? Do you have something in your sleeve? Or in your pocket? Did you want to buy my drink so you could _roofie_ it—"

"Steve," Bucky whimpers out, because _Jesus Mary and Joseph_ the last thing he needs is a fistfight with this guy because Steve doesn't have enough sense not to call someone who looks like they eat steroids sprinkled over their cereal a _rapist_. He starts tugging at that belt loop.

"Or did you just want me to owe you something?" Steve reaches behind himself and twists Bucky's arm. He's stronger than he looks. Bnucky lets out a whimper that's hidden by the music and lets the belt loop go. "Did someone teach you that if you bought a drink for someone, they'd be obligated to pay you back by sitting on your dick?"

"For God's sake, _Steve_ —"

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Brock demands. He crowds into Steve's space—which, by consequence, means he crowds _Bucky_. Bucky has a serious thing about personal space that only three people on the entire planet are allowed to violate. This Brock guy is _not_ Steve, is _not_ Bucky's sister and is _certainly not_ Bucky's mother. He also happens to be built like a brick shithouse and towers head and shoulders over Steve, whom he's giving a look of malice the likes of which are more appropriate in WWE wrestling competitions.

Bucky says, "We don't want any trouble," and takes Steve's hand, tugs in a way that brooks no arguments. Then, because he's a fucking masochist, he can't help himself from looking over his shoulder. "But if you even think about putting your hands on my guy, I swear to God I'll beat your fucking face in."

Steve stomps to the middle of the dance floor, safely out of view of both the bar and the little booth their friends are gathered around in the corner. Bucky almost bumps into him, not expecting him to stop so suddenly. When he looks down, Steve has already turned around, turned a fiery glare onto him. Steve has a way of looking up at people that makes it feel like he's looking _down_ on them when he wants to, and right now Bucky feels about three inches tall.

"I can take care of my fucking _self_ , Bucky," he snaps. "I've been fighting my own battles since first grade. I _don't_ need your self-righteous displays of alpha male dominance, _Christ_. It's the last thing I need."

Bucky sighs and closes his eyes, knowing immediately what he's done wrong. "I know. I'm sorry. But if I hadn't, he would've…"

"I know," Steve says, and his voice is a little more gentle now, a little calmer. Bucky has to step closer to hear him over the music and Steve sets both hands on his shoulders. "But you can't keep trying to save me from myself, Buck. It's not fair to yourself or to me. You've gotta let me fight my own battles."

"I know." Bucky rests his hands on Steve's waist. "I just…you don't know how fuckin' scared I am of losing you, Stevie."

"Yeah," Steve says softly. "I know the feeling." The song changes, something a little faster with a beat that's easier to dance to. They instinctively move a little closer, Bucky's hips start to move with the beat and Steve's arms go around his neck. Steve says, "Our friend is still glaring at us. Dance with me?" and sinks his fingers into Bucky's hair. Bucky wants to kiss him, but doesn't.

"What are friends for, huh?" Bucky chuckles. Steve smiles and the moment, the sensation of almost-kiss, passes like it always does. "So, tell me straight: are you trying to hook up with Sam, or not? Because if you're not, then I'm gonna."

Steve frowns. "Sam? No, I'm not…no, Sam's just a friend."

"So are we," Bucky says, with a grin and a slow, deliberate grind of his hips. Steve rolls his eyes but he can't stop the flush in his cheeks, the one Bucky knows is associated with Steve's arousal, with the beginnings of tingles between his legs.

"Two totally different things," Steve says with a finality that cannot be rebuffed. "You and I are…we're us. Besides, Sam doesn't really… _do_ casual hook-ups? He's a serial monogamist and…I'm… _not._ I don't think he's really looking for a relationship right now, anyway. He and his long-term boyfriend just broke up and I think he's still a bit bummed about it. I mean, it was mutual. One of those lives-heading-in-opposite-directions things, but I'm not sure it's entirely what Sam wanted. Riley was drifting, though, and I think he wanted Riley to be happy more than he wanted to save their romantic relationship. They're still friends." Steve gives him a look over his shoulder, a small shrug. "Sam's always been a bit of a martyr."

"You're totally one to talk." Bucky lets Steve turn around in his arms and ignores his glare. Sets his hands on his hips and watches the way his body moves, follows the circular motion of his hips. "What's with the boots, then?"

"…the boots?"

"You know," Bucky says, "your Fuck Me Boots. You only wear them when you're trying to get laid." Steve throws him an unimpressed look, but Bucky stands his ground. "I've known you how long? I can totally tell when you're trying to get laid, and the boots are a symptom. They make you a couple inches taller and your ass looks killer when you wear them. Not that it doesn't always." He slips his hands into Steve's pockets, grins for a second and wonders if maybe he should stop letting this happen, should stop getting himself into situations where he's complimenting the ass on a guy he's known since they were both in diapers. As usual, he does absolutely nothing to alter the status quo.

Steve doesn't either. He says, "I don't know what you're talking about," and moves a hand back, gets it around the nape of Bucky's neck.

"Go ahead," Bucky mutters, " _try_ looking me in the eyes and tell me that I'm not right." When Steve keeps looking down, seemingly entirely focused on their hips moving with the same slow, counterclockwise motion, he says, "That's what I thought. So it's not Sam…and you're not looking for someone to hook up with—because, y'know, 'Roid Rage over there turned out to be a bag of dicks but he's kinda your type, physically-speaking, and bags of dicks are good for hitting and quitting. Who're you wearing the boots for?"

"Oh my fucking _God_ ," Steve groans. "Do I have to spell it out? Do I have to announce it on the six o'clock news? Jesus, Bucky, can we for once hook up without it being a _thing_ —"

"Hey, we hook up all the time without it being a _thing_!" Because Steve doesn't like _things_ , not since Peggy Carter, and Bucky would rather eat his left shoe—every single left shoe he owns—than let Steve know that Bucky sometimes, in the midst of things, _wishes_ it were a thing. "You just usually don't get all dressed up for me, is all." Darcy was right, as much as Bucky hates to admit it. Bucky is and always has been nothing more than a dog waiting for commands when it comes to Steve Rogers.

Steve sighs. "I just felt like it, alright?"

"Alright."

They dance until the song ends, and Steve makes sure Brock has fled the scene. Their friends are all where they left them, most of them on their way to at least slightly tipsy with the exception of Natasha, whose metabolism for alcohol is the most stereotypically Russian Bucky has ever encountered.

He and Steve stay dry all night, interest in alcohol curtailed by whatever might be waiting for them if they attempt to approach the bar again. A little after midnight, they part ways with Natasha and Clint and wait outside with Sam for Jane and Darcy's cab. Apparently, Thor was working earlier in the evening but was called away for some reason and left the girls to enjoy their time while he went to deal with something that Jane only describes as a 'Family Thing' with a telling grimace on her face. Unfortunately, that means the girls have to find their way home on their own.

"I'll go in the cab with you two," Sam offers. "Nothing sketchy, I promise."

"Sam's a therapist," Bucky interjects with a smirk. You would never know that he was one of the only two sober people in the crowd.

"Psychology major."

"Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe."

Sam rolls his eyes as the cab pulls up. The girls get in first and Jane leaves the door propped open in invitation for Sam to join them. Turning to Steve, Sam says, "Alright, man. I'll see you sometime before I go back to D.C. Thanks for tonight; it was something."

"You sure you're okay to get back on your own?" Steve asks. He steps forward to accept a hug from Sam, and Bucky is still having a hard time wrapping his head around the idea that Steve doesn't wanna have Sam's babies—because Bucky kind of still wants to have Sam's babies—but he supposes it's just one of those Steve Things.

"Steve, I'm staying at a well-known hotel. I'll be fine; I'm a big boy." He pats Steve's back and pulls away. "I'll text you when I get back, if it'll make you feel better."

"Please."

"Alright." Sam turns to Bucky, holds out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Bucky."

"Likewise," Bucky replies, genuinely meaning it for the first time in awhile. "Don't be a stranger."

Sam nods and gives one of those whole-face blinding white smiles and it makes Bucky's heart flutter, but not as hard as it does when Steve leans against him, even if he's probably sapping his warmth more than anything. Sam gets in the cab and it heads off, and Bucky and Steve watch it until it goes around a corner. They turn around then and head back in the direction of Steve's apartment.

Thirty minutes later, Bucky's head is between Steve's thighs when a phone vibrates on the bedside table. Steve grasps for it, fumbling, and announces, "Sam says…he's b-back…" He drops the phone by his hip and reaches up to grab the pillows behind his head, "Ah-ah! Oh guh—god—"

"The girls home too?" Bucky lifts his head and cleans his lips of Steve's semi-sweet musk.

"Uh-huh," Steve says to the ceiling. He threads his hand in Bucky's hair and pushes his face back down with light pressure. Bucky swirls his tongue and sucks with purpose. "Yeah…oh fuck _ye-e-ah_ …ohohoh! Oh God, oh God—" He shudders, hooks a leg around Bucky's neck, fists his hands desperately into the sheets. "I'm coming I'm coming I'm coming—" his back arches as his orgasm rushes out of him, wetting the sheets.

As he catches his breath, Bucky picks up the phone and glances at Sam's text. _Oh look at that made it back to my room all by myself_. _Got the ladies home too._

Bucky texts _smartass_ because it's what Steve would want. A moment later, Sam responds with _:P Goodnight_ and Bucky passes the phone back up to Steve, who's still wallowing in climax. "Sam says goodnight."

"Mm," Steve hums. Bucky wants to kiss him, but doesn't. Instead, he brushes his lips softly over the red rosebud tattooed on his hip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Bucky performs cunnilingus on Steve. The scene is nonexplicit. 
> 
> This chapter was intentionally nonexplicit, but the rest of them, with the exception of chapter four, will be. If you would like spoilers just to make sure that this fic is something you will be comfortable reading, please feel free to message me on tumblr at the same username (Lavenderprose). It will work best if you message me off anon, but if you just don't feel comfortable with that, I can figure something out. :)
> 
> Thank you for reading this chapter!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interest in this story seems somewhat lackluster and I'm hoping that's just because the first chapter was mostly exposition? At least, I'm hoping that's why? If not, there's really nothing I can do about that I suppose, but I'm hoping that this chapter will be more enjoyable than the first.
> 
> Slightly spoilery warnings are in the end notes! I'm putting a **suicide trigger warning** here, but there is an explanation in the end note for anyone who may need it.

"Lemme ask you a question."

Bucky pauses, sandwich halfway to his mouth. "Uh, yeah?"

"You don't have to answer if you don't want to," Sam says, leaning back against his chair. He has a pair of sunglasses perched on the end of his nose to dissuade the sun from shining in his eyes. He's been a New Yorker for five months and already he looks more the part than Bucky has ever felt. It's four days before the first day of June, and it's been a hard winter—Steve had three colds, one of which developed into pneumonia as they're wont to do, and Bucky spent a tense week and a half sitting by his hospital bed. With summer setting in to stay, Bucky finally allows himself to breathe.

"Usually when people have to say that before questions, they're not one I'm gonna want to answer, but continue." He sets down his sandwich and leans back against his own chair. It's a nice day for eating outside; a cool breeze and a sunny sky. The urge to light up a cigarette claws at him, but he's trying to quit again, as he does after Steve's every hospital visit. He's making progress this time.

Sam asks, "How did you and Steve start doing…whatever it is you're doing?" and yeah, this isn't a question Bucky wants to answer, but he has to give Sam props for holding it in this long. It's a question he knows Sam has been craving to ask since the word _benefits_ came out of Natasha's mouth that first night at the club.

Bucky sighs, rubs the back of his neck. "It's a long story, man."

"I got time."

He can't tell if Sam says this to be pushy or to assure Bucky that if he's in the mood to spill his guts, Sam is in the mood to listen. Honestly, Bucky doubts it's the former. Sam has this earnest kind of presence, an aura that almost screams to anyone near him that he guy has never let a malevolent thought pass through his mind. Whatever Sam wants this information for, it's nothing untoward. Bucky ducks his head, sighs and rubs his upper lip.

"Alright," he says. "But you can't tell Steve that I told you. It's only me and Steve who know the whole thing anymore, and…he doesn't like letting other people in on that secret, alright?"

"If you're gonna be betraying any kind of confidence—"

"No, it's not…I think it'd be good to have someone other than me know what the story is on him," Bucky says. "And you're important to him, Sam. You know that, right?" When Sam smiles—an earnest, happy thing—Bucky picks up a pickle and pops it into his mouth, gathers his thoughts for a moment. Once they're all assembled in a way he thinks makes the most sense, he starts, "Freshman year of high school, there was this girl named Peggy Carter. She was…mmm, Sam, she was gorgeous. Beautiful big brown eyes and all this wavy brown hair. She always wore this bright red lipstick, no matter what was going on. Smart, too, and clever as all hell. She was…she was something special, and Steve loved her and…she loved Steve. 'n I loved both of 'em for how much they loved each other.

"So, uh, they dated all through high school, pretty much. Come graduation, Steve proposes and Peggy says yes and…they got some shit for it from Peggy's dad, but…they were so happy, Sam, my God. They were…" he sighs and runs a hand over his eyes. "You gotta know what it did to me, seeing him so happy. His mom died young, y'know, and for the longest time all he had was me and mine, and then suddenly there was this smart, thoughtful, _amazing_ woman who saw him for what he was, and loved him just as hard as he loved her. I was so happy for them, Sam, I didn't even have it in me to be…" just before he can let the word _jealous_ slip out of his mouth, he catches it.

"And, uh…so. Peggy, she was half English. Her ma was from London. And she had this whole…estrangement thing going on with her ma? And so Peggy decides that she's gonna go back to London for the summer and visit some friends and try to, I guess, extend an olive branch to her ma via a wedding invite, see where everything went from there. So, she gets on a flight to London and…uh, it never _got_ there. It went down somewhere over the Atlantic, nobody was ever really sure."

"Jesus Christ," Sam mutters.

"Steve was just…bad." Bucky shakes his head, unable to say anything further. "Uh…for a long time. Four or five months after Peggy died, I come home—we were living together at the time, in dorms—and, uh, Steve's…on his bed. And he's not moving. And there's this empty bottle of his, uh, his heart medication next to him and…God, fuck, Sam. I thought he was already dead, I thought…" he stops, shakes his head. A subtle glance around the outdoor eating area reveals that nobody is looking at him, but he still can't help but feel like everyone is watching him. "He was so still, Sam, and so cold…"

"Hey, man, it's okay. It's alright, Bucky. Stop if you can't go on."

"No, it's…" He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, and repeats the process until he feels a bit less like he's going to break down. "So, uh…I shoved my fingers down his throat, even though I know you're not supposed to do that kind of shit. I just panicked. He puked up most of it, but I called 911, and they still took him to get his stomach pumped. He was on a psyche ward for awhile, because that's what happens when you try to commit suicide. It's fuckin' miserable in one of those places. I couldn't bring my cell phone with me into the room and they wouldn't let him have pens or pencils. We didn't really…talk about it a lot. Because I could tell he regretted it and I didn't want to make it worse for him, but…I dunno. One day we were sitting there and I looked at him and I said…Alright, Rogers. I ain't gonna tell you not to kill yourself, because…if that's the only way you can think of to make it stop hurting, then I can't stop you. But I told him, I said…gimme a chance to help stop the hurt. I can't bring Peggy back, and I can't ever make it easier for you that you lost her, but…God. I couldn't lose him. So I told him as much.

"He was real quiet for a few days. When he was discharged, we went back to the dorm. He slept for, like, three days straight and I just sat there and I…watched him. Dunno why, I just…I had to keep my eyes on him, make sure he was alright. That he was still there and breathing. I musta stayed up for just about as long as he slept. Finally passed out around the seventy-two hour mark. When I woke up, there he was…layin' there next to me. And I dunno what happened, it's all kind of a rush, but we, y'know…" He gives Sam a look—brows raised and mouth quirked. Remembers Steve taking his hand and biting his lip and bringing it down between his legs, and how it was all fine. How Bucky's brain only stuttered for a moment before saying _Oh, so this is what we are now_ and accepting it.

"Had intercourse," Sam chuckles, nodding. "Mama always said that if you can't say what it is, you ain't got no business doin' it."

"No, not intercourse. We don't…Steve and I, we don't do _sex_ -sex." He scratches the back of his neck, shrugging. "Steve doesn't like it." He takes another surreptitious glance around at the assembled masses. There are only two other occupied tables in the outdoor dining area, because it really is a bit chilly for it. One is occupied by a young woman with curled blonde hair and a frilly blue scarf, staring intently at a computer. The other by a couple who looks like they are in the midst of their own tense conversation. Both are on the other side of the courtyard and neither is even so much as looking in their direction—the girl has headphones in, Bucky thinks—but he can't help but feel a little self-conscious talking about such things out in the open like this.

"To each their own," Sam responds, and it's something he says about ten times a week as though to show people how cordial he can be—as if anyone would have a hard time noticing. "So that's how it happened? You've just been this way ever since?"

It's said with that tone of really, really faint skepticism that Bucky has learned to pinpoint in people of Sam's disposition. He groans and rubs his hands over his face. "Please don't psychoanalyze this, Sam. Seriously, I'm begging. It works best if it's something we don't think about." It would work better if Bucky could get out of his own head half the time, but recently he's come to realize that might be a little too much to ask.

"Alright, sorry," Sam says. He says it like he's actually apologizing, not passive-aggressively surrendering, so Bucky lets his hackles drop. "Can I ask you another question?"

Bucky eyes him silently for a moment and finally answers, "…yeah," with a resigned sigh.

"How long has it been since you slept with anyone other than Steve?"

"I was afraid you were gonna ask that," Bucky groans. He pitches forward, leans his elbows on the table. "I dunno. A while?"

"What're we talking here, months?"

"More like…two or three years."

Sam gives a long whistle. "Shit, man."

"I know, okay? I fucking know." He takes his hands away from his face, stares off into the middle distance. "I just, uh…I dunno. I hooked up with people other than him for the first couple of years—it really wasn't all that common back then, we slept together maybe once every couple of months. I even dated someone for awhile, but that didn't work out. Eventually it just got to the point where…I wasn't into casual hook-ups anymore, and I didn't have time for a relationship or really _want_ one."

"One more question…"

"Sam! Jesus, I know what Monty Python says but you could've at least warned me that the Spanish Inquisition might be on its way."

"Last one, I promise. It's an important one." Sam waits until Bucky gives him a reluctant nod. "How long have you been in love with him?"

Bucky drops his head against his hand. "Shit."

Sam's voice is gentle when he says, "Please tell me that you're honest enough with yourself to admit you're in love with him."

"Yeah, I…yeah. Um…Jesus, I don't even know. A long time, I really don't know." He's being honest. He doesn't know how long he's been in love with Steve; all he knows is the exact moment he realized it. When he walked into that room and thought Steve Rogers was dead and wondered how he was going to survive without him. He knew exactly how Steve felt in that moment, when he lost Peggy.

His phone saves him from having to say more. It chirps in his pocket and he pulls it out, glances at it. "Speak of the devil. Steve says he's got something to show me."

"Something, or _something_?"

"Sam Wilson, I had faith in you," Bucky sighs. "I guess you're just as filthy as the rest of us." He wraps his sandwich back up in its paper, shoves it into his backpack and stands up. "He just does this sometimes, has me come over and look at what he's working on and then he bitches at me for two hours about being an artist."

"Sounds like fun." Sam's words sound sarcastic, but there is a softness to his mouth that suggests a certain genuineness.

Tossing his bag over his shoulder, Bucky asks, "Do you mind if I take off? It's just, when he says _Come look at this painting for me_ there's like a five percent chance that he's in the middle of some kind of existential crisis and he just doesn't wanna say it." It's happened before.

Sam waves a hand. "Nah, man. It's fine. I'll take a rain check."

Bucky offers a smile in return, pats Sam's shoulder, and leaves.

* * *

Steve answers the door in an oversized T-shirt and no pants. The T-shirt is covered in paint and so is he, from the flecks in his hair to the enormous splotches on his thighs. His glasses are drooping towards the tip of his nose and slightly askew, although he's managed to keep paint from getting on them—which he's always careful to, so Bucky isn't surprised. Bucky takes him in, paint and all, and hopes that it doesn't outwardly show how breathless Steve makes him, how beautiful Bucky thinks he looks in this state.

"Hey," he says, standing unashamedly in the doorway despite his scantily clad state. It's not even that he's forgotten he's underdressed either—that's also something he does, when he gets rolling—because the next words out of his mouth are, "This may or may not be the only clean piece of clothing I have."

Bucky grins. "Is 'clean' a relative term in Rogers vernacular?"

Steve glances down at the shirt and sighs. "Yeah, it's…whatever, you know what I mean. Come in before the entire neighborhood gets an eyeful." He steps back and walks back into the apartment, sits down at his stool and continues to do what Bucky presumes he has been doing for the recent past: glaring at his easel. The shirt settles around him in a way that reveals his lack of underwear. Bucky swallows thickly and pulls out his uneaten sandwich.

"You want half of this?" he asks, holding it up.

"What? Oh." Steve stares at it, bottom lip caught between his lip, then nods. "What is it?"

"Pastrami on rye. From the kosher deli on Division." As is typical of itty bitty ma and pop Brooklyn delis, it's an absolutely enormous sandwich.

"Sure." Steve turns back to his painting with a sigh, crosses his legs and does that thing where he folds himself almost in half, belly and chest flush with his lap as he peers at the canvas from a closer distance than is probably healthy for his eyesight. "You know, I'm always satisfied with something when I'm painting it, but then once I'm done…all I can see are mistakes."

Bucky plates the sandwich halves and comes around to the other side of the easel to hand Steve his. The figure in the painting is naked, possessed of a slim waist and short hair, genitalless with small, barely-there breasts. The color surrounding the figure, whom themselves is all stark white, is a distinctive color red that Bucky has come to expect from Steve's art. Someone who knew nothing about him might think it was a style choice, a way to differentiate himself. Bucky isn't sure whether Steve does it consciously or unconsciously, whether he realizes that it's the exact color lipstick Peggy always wore.

"I like it," Bucky says, mouth full of pastrami. "What's wrong with it?"

"I dunno. It's just not saying what I want it to." He straightens up and drops the plate into his lap, picks the sandwich up and takes a bite that's more a nibble than anything. Bucky watches his strong jaw work as he chews. "Ugh, I dunno. I'm tired of looking at it." He continues to stare at it though, with those two lines between his eyebrows that Bucky always just wants to rub at with his thumb until they go away. "The pallet is too limited, but I don't know…what color I would add…" he sighs to himself again, grumbles around the next bite of his sandwich. "Hey, why were you over on Division, anyway? You live in Vinegar Hill and you work in DUMBO."

"Sam and I met for an early dinner."

"Oh." Steve's lower lip bows out in something resembling a pout. "You should have told me you were meeting Sam. I feel like it's been forever since I've seen him."

"I knew you were busy." He glances around the room, finds Steve's other stool, and drags it over to rest next to Steve's. They spend their meal staring at the canvas, exchanging few words and letting the room grow dark around them.

When Bucky finishes his sandwich, he takes the plate into the kitchenette and puts it in the sink, turns around and immediately slaps eyes on the huge pile of laundry next to Steve's bed. He says, "Do you want me to put in a load of laundry for you?" because he's a good fucking friend, goddamn it, and it wouldn't be the first time either of them did laundry for the other. They lived together for two years in undergrad, for God's sake.

Steve glances over, a pitiful look on his face. "Would you? I love you."

Bucky smiles, happy for the sentiment even if it isn't the exact flavor he'd like. "Love you too, ya punk. It's just like you to pull some bullshit like go so long without doing laundry that you don't even have a pair of pants clean to wear to the laundry room." Even as he says this, he's crossing the room to stuff all he can into the mesh hamper and pick it up by its handles. "Do the machines take quarters or…?"

"Yeah, there's a cup of them on my nightstand."

Bucky glances at the cup—which is small and plastic and has the logo for the hotel-casino in Atlantic City where Jane and Thor had their wedding. He jiggles it around a little to make it sound like he's taking some out, sets it back down on the nightstand, and uses his own quarters in the machines downstairs.

When he returns, Steve is in the shower. Bucky sits on the sofa and pulls his computer out of his bag, writes a little bit more on his current project—a proposal for a youth center that is going up in Williamsburg that his firm is trying to get the backing for. He wouldn't exactly say that architecture is his calling, because nothing has ever quite tugged at his heart like art tugs at Steve's, but it interests him, and he likes the work.

Steve comes out of the shower and picks up the same paint-covered T-shirt he was wearing when Bucky showed up. Bucky makes an abortive noise, _ah!,_ and he stops, turns around. "What? You just put all my other clothes in the wash."

"Yeah, but what's the point of taking a shower if you're just gonna put that filthy thing back on?" He stands up, removes the flannel he's wearing over a white tee of his own and throws it to him. "There. I just took it out of the wash this morning and I didn't smoke in it, I swear. I'm trying to quit."

To Steve's credit, he takes Bucky at his word. Doesn't even sniff it before he drops his towel and pulls Bucky's shirt onto his shoulders. He buttons it up to his navel to keep it closed over his modesty, rolls the sleeves up to the elbow and throws himself down next to Bucky. There is further companionable silence as Bucky types and Steve pulls out his phone and scrolls, shoulder pressed against Bucky's. An hour or so later, Steve asks, "Are you gonna stay the night?" and Bucky makes an affirming noise. It's the last they say to each other until well after midnight, when Bucky closes his computer and stretches out all his limbs, yawning and squeezing his eyes closed, side tingling with the vague sensation of Steve getting up. He goes downstairs to get Steve's clothes, which he'd moved into the dryer during the hours of silence, and when he returns the lights are off and Steve is a shadow standing in front of the canvas.

"C'mon, stop doin' that," Bucky sighs, dropping the hamper next to the door and coming to stand behind Steve. "You'll make yourself sick. Sleep on it, look it at with new eyes in the morning, or whatever it is you artists say." He gets his hands on Steve's waist, rests his chin on his shoulder. "Want me to take your mind off it?" He moves a hand down, sneaks his fingers under the hem of the shirt and along the crease of Steve's thigh until they find his short, wiry pubic hair. Steve gives a faint, ragged breath. He moves them back and forth, takes Steve's earlobe between his teeth.

"Bucky…"

"Hmm?" He sneaks his fingers down deeper between his legs, just to gather some of Steve's natural slick. A noise gurgles up from Steve's throat, sudden and low. He wraps his hand around Bucky's wrist.

"I want you to…put your fingers inside me."

"What, really?" In his shock, Bucky takes back his hand, squeezes Steve's waist in a sideways sort of motion until he turns around. "You usually don't—"

"I know." Steve has a look of determination on his face, the kind that Bucky remembers from things like exams Steve was afraid he'd fail, fights he wasn't sure he was going to win.

"But you don't like it."

Steve's eyes narrow. "You don't think I know what I like and what I don't?"

"Well…yeah, but it's been four years and all you've ever asked me to do is go down on you and rub your—"

"Look…okay. Whatever, just forget it." He sighs and walks to the bed, tugging the shirt back down around his thighs. Bucky stands there for a moment, watching him and wondering just what the fuck is going on. When Steve throws himself face first onto the bed, Bucky runs a hand over his face with a grimace.

"Sorry, I'm being a putz."

"Yeah, you kind of are," Steve says into his pillow. Bucky crawls into the bed, lowers his head over the back of Steve's neck and sucks a bruise there, Steve sighing into his pillow.

When he's done, and there is a bruise on Steve's lovely neck that will darken into a nice purple color—Bucky feels a guilty sort of satisfaction, pleased that he's left his mark on Steve but knowing that he has no right to—he asks, "Wanna tell me what's going on in your head? You don't have to."

Steve sighs into the bed. "I _like_ it. Being fingered…or, um, _penetrated_. But only sometimes and I figured that telling you I didn't like it was easier than trying to explain that whether or not I like being fingered depends on whether or not my body and I are agreeing…which isn't always."

"Oh." Bucky traces his hand up the dip of Steve's spine. "You know you can tell me about these things, right? I might not totally understand, but I'll always listen and I'll always respect you."

"I know," Steve mumbles. "I just…I hate people thinking that I'm…broken."

Bucky really doesn't know what to say to that. Doesn't know how to assure Steve that he's perfect, he's everything Bucky wants, without revealing something compromising about himself. Instead, he whispers, "You still want me to finger you?" and walks his fingers down Steve's back, dips into the warm, slightly damp part of his thighs.

"Yeah," Steve sighs, spreading his legs further. Bucky presses two fingers into his warmth, definitely slick now. Steve shudders in the darkness, licks his lips and swallows and presses his face into the mattress. Bucky sits up, sits on the bed crisscross like he's watching television instead of preparing to finger his best friend.

"Tell me if I do anything wrong," he says, more nervous for this, for something many people with his level of sexual experience would consider _foreplay_ , than he has been for a large portion of the intercourse he's had in his life.

"I will," Steve breathes, and then: "Bucky, _please_."

The last thing Bucky wants to do is make Steve ask a third time. He moves his hand back up and cups his hand between Steve's thighs, slides his middle finger deep. Steve breathes in suddenly, something that's almost a gasp, the muscles around Bucky's finger flutter. He's wet and tight, precious and writhing and Bucky grows hard as he twists his finger around, searching. When he finds what he's looking for, that triangular rough patch that feels on his finger the same way the roof of his mouth feels on his tongue, he presses down and circles. Steve turns his face into his pillow and makes the smallest of noises.

"There?" A nod. "Am I scratching you?" If he knew he was going to be doing this tonight, he'd have cut his fingernails, because the situation with them is getting a bit ridiculous. They're thick and don't break easily and, left unattended, tend to become talons. He can feel his nail dragging against all of that soft, slick, unexposed skin.

"No," Steve breathes. Bucky wishes the lights were on, wishes he could see the blush rising high in his cheeks, the wetness on his lower eyelids from squeezing his eyes tight shut. "Oh God, yes…I like it, don't stop." Bucky, for whom the idea of stopping without Steve's command is unfathomable, works his finger deeper, excited by Steve's noises, by his breathiness, by his declaration of _I like it_. Steve's growing enthusiasm sends tingles through his body, turns him on.

Steve's hand scrambles backwards suddenly, face rising out of the pillow to pant a gasp, in-out. He taps Bucky's wrist. "Two, gimme two and then—go—go like this—" he circles his fingers slow and deliberate, pressing hard, against Bucky's wrist. When Bucky does as he asks, middle and ring finger pressed inside of him and surrounded by wet heat—Bucky banishes, with prejudice, all thoughts of what that tightness would feel like elsewhere—Steve reburies his head, gets his knees under himself and gets his ass in the air. His fingers curl and straighten spasmodically, hovering next to his head. His toes arch.

"Yeah," Bucky whispers, attaining a mindless sort of sexual autopilot. "There you go, mmm-hmm, yeah, yeah…"

One of Steve's hands wriggles out of sight and Bucky can feel him touching himself, rubbing between his legs as Bucky rubs inside him. Every once in awhile, he contracts hard and whimpers or gasps. Bucky's wrist grows tired and aches but he doesn't stop, he soldiers through because it will all be worth it when Steve comes.

"Faster," Steve pants. He shifts his hips back, like he's trying to fuck himself on Bucky's fingers. "Oh God, I'm so close." Bucky drapes his other arm over the small of his back, presses his temple to Steve's flank, pants with the back and forth movement of their bodies. If Steve's bed had a headboard, it would be making a ruckus loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

He drags his lips over Steve's hip. "Yeah, come. Come for me, Stevie, yeah—"

Steve heaves in a great breath, back arching. His free hand clenches tight in the sheets and his other is frantic. His heels curl up towards his thighs. All Bucky hears is the blood rushing in his own ears and Steve's rapid breathing. Then, finally, he yells. It's a loud, mindless noise followed shortly by, "I'm coming I'm coming—"

He comes wetly, a gush against Bucky's hand and down his arm. It's the first time Bucky has been in a position for Steve to come on him, to feel Steve's orgasm as it rushes out of him, not caught by bed sheets or Steve's pants but Bucky's skin. It's warm and intimate and Bucky's balls draw up so hard and so fast that, for a moment, he thinks he's coming as well.

"Fuck," he says, pulling his fingers gently out of Steve, only after he's helped him ease back onto his tummy on the bed. He stares at his glistening hand and wrist.

"Sorry. Fuck, sorry." Steve turns over onto his back, stares from between his fingers. "Goddamn it. Sorry." He tosses his forearm over his eyes. "I, uh…I squi—come, a lot, when I…'m, y'know."

"Yeah, I can see that," Bucky says, absolutely delighted. "Fuck, that's hot."

Steve kicks out at him. "Shut up."

Bucky grins, says, "No, I'm serious," and dodges another kick. "Steve!"

"I don't like being made fun of, Buck."

"I'm not making fun of you, ya damned punk," Bucky says, a little defensive now. He swings one leg over Steve's hips and straddles him, grabs his hand and presses it to his crotch, against the mound of his impressive erection through his jeans. "That feel like a joke?" He cants his hips into Steve's hand as Steve rattles out a heady sigh, reverses the position of his palm and presses the heel of his hand against Bucky's arousal.

"Fuck, you're so hard."

"You _came_ down my _arm_ ," Bucky grounds out in answer. He wants to tell Steve how fucking erotic it was, how intimate it felt, but what comes out is, "You honestly have _no_ idea how fucking sexy that is," and Steve's eyes flash.

Bucky lets himself be flipped onto his back by a smart little move of Steve's hips that he's familiar with—knees tight on either side of Bucky's hips, feet hooked behind his knees, up and over. Steve's hands on his belt are frantic, unbuckling it and whipping it out of its loops, throwing it across the room where it _clangs_ against something else metallic and then _fwumps_ onto the floor. He thumbs open his button and tugs his zipper down in one movement, gets his hand into the slit of Bucky's boxers and pulls him out. Bucky, holding himself up on his elbows, watches as Steve braces himself against Bucky's abs and grinds down against his cock, naked and still soaking wet between his legs.

"Oh my God, what are you doing to me?" Bucky groans, head falling back against the mattress. All his brain knows is warmth, slickness, the beautiful body moving atop his. "Oh God, fuck, don't let me slip in."

"I'm not, just—shh, just—" He circles his hips. Bucky flings his head back, grabs two handfuls of Steve's ass. Steve huffs, "Like that?"

"Yeah, yeah, just like that—oh God, that's beautiful." Steve will think he's talking about the sensation, the feeling of Steve rutting against him, that hot and slick slide, and it's that but it's also—it's also the vision that Steve makes, hair in his eyes and chest heaving, his strong jaw clenched like the abs that he hates because they're not big enough, not prominent enough, not _enough_ , but Bucky thinks are beautiful, thinks are masculine as all get-out when it comes to it, whipcord muscle that Bucky wants to lick and kiss until they are covered in his bites, his love, his lovebites—

Bucky comes to a shuddering climax across his own stomach, holding Steve's hips in a halt when the fire in his belly grows unbearable, just in case, because honestly, what a risky stunt.

But he did it, and Bucky can't bring himself to be upset because it was so good and Steve _did that_ , and it feels like that should be remarked upon, that something has shifted. That the status quo has been altered in a way that he cannot yet fully comprehend.

"The next time you have even a vague idea that you might do that," Bucky says, "fucking tell me, because the only condom I have is probably expired." Probably isn't safe to use, either, considering it's been languishing in the cash pocket of Bucky's wallet for well over a year,

"Sorry."

"Stevie, you have _got_ to stop apologizing for good sex," Bucky says. He lets go of Steve's hips, watches him slide off and away, roll onto his back. The shirt is completely open now and provides him no cover as he lays there, practically spread-eagle. The dishwater blond of his pubic hair looks like a shadow between his thighs in this much darkness and his nipples are erect against the chill in the room. For some reason, seeing him like this—laid out, bare, pubic hair and naked breasts and the soft hair under his arms and the jut of his hipbones, completely unashamed of what he is—is in some ways more intimate than the sex they just had.

"You okay?" Bucky whispers, afraid that it was too much for him. It was intense.

Steve smiles, eyes still closed, and nods. "Yeah. I'm fine." He tips his head to the side, opens his eyes and finds Bucky's. "Forgot how good it felt."

"Being fingered?" Bucky asks, because fuck yeah fingering. He's not ashamed to admit that he loves it, maybe not as much as fucking or getting fucked, but—there's always a place in his heart, a place of affection, for getting fingered the right way by the right person.

"Something like that," Steve says, and then it's small smiles and shadows and Steve's small, pretty breasts for a long time.

He breaks the spell by getting up, walking into the kitchenette to wash his hands. When he returns to bed, Steve has buttoned the flannel all the way to his collarbone and pulled down the blankets, already laying on his right side and half-asleep. Bucky strips to boxers and crawls in behind him, pulls the covers up and falls asleep on his back, one hand under his head and the other splayed wide across his own chest.

Steve gets out of bed at something like four o'clock. Bucky says, "Steve, what?" and plants his face back in his pillow, barely awake enough to hear Steve whisper, "Shh, go back to sleep," and feel his hand carding through his hair before he's asleep again.

When Bucky next wakes up, at the much more sensible hour of eight-thirty, Steve is conked out under his arm, just absolutely dead to the world, and there is blue paint on his hands and on the canvas, wrapping in tendrils around the figure previously made of negative space. Whereas before it seemed as though the red, Peggy's red, was a pool that the figure was swimming in—it now appears as if the figure is held up by the blue, ribbons wrapping around arms and thighs, and the red is—is some kind of aura that comes from within. Bucky stares at it for a moment, intrigued but somewhat lost as to the symbolism. Tells a barely-conscious Steve that he has to go to work, and Steve nods, swats him away and rolls over onto his front. Bucky smiles and wants to kiss him, but doesn't.

Back in his own house, he showers for work and only realizes how badly he must have reeked of sex when the smell is absent once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Bucky explains, in moderately explicit detail, a suicide attempt Steve made after experiencing the loss of a previous partner. The attempt took place several years previous and it is implied that Steve has recovered but is still effected by the experience.  
> \- Steve asks Bucky to vaginally finger him. Bucky is at first unsure because Steve has previously stated a dislike for vaginal penetration. Steve clarifies that he does like to be penetrated, but not always. After this, Bucky does as Steve asks. Consent is clear and explicit.  
> \- Steve initiates genital-to-genital contact without penetration. Although he does so without asking Bucky first, Bucky quickly consents enthusiastically.  
> \- Bucky, via the narrator--i.e., not out loud--muses about the aesthetic of Steve's naked breasts. The anecdote is short and more or less mentioned in passing, but I wasn't sure if content of that nature would trigger dysphoria, so I'm choosing to warn for it here.  
> If anyone can think of any other warnings I should put here, please feel free to comment or shoot me a message on Tumblr under the same username.  
> Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, please check the warnings in the end notes!

A key incentive for Bucky to take his current job with Stark Architecture and Planning was the one week of vacation and floating holiday that kicked in immediately after he was hired. It's a perk that very few companies offer, and although vacations have to be scheduled a month in advance and are on a first-come, first-serve basis—the entire months of November and December are booked solid for three years, but the week of Passover was nice and clear and Bucky, as the only Jew in the office, held religious precedence anyway—it's nice to have the luxury. The floating holiday is intended for use on one's birthday or whatever nongovernment holiday a person wishes to have a day off to celebrate, and Bucky probably should have scheduled it for Yom Kippur, but what his mom doesn't know won't hurt her.

Instead, his first order of business upon being told that he had a floating holiday was to schedule it for the same day in late June that he's been calling in sick or skipping classes on for five years. As usual, on the day itself he sends out a mass text the gist of which is _don't try to contact me today_ , turns off his phone, and takes the subway to Steve's place.

Steve doesn't really react to seeing him on his doorstep when he answers. He's dressed this time, at least. In jeans and a fitted white T-shirt and a grey zip-up that's a few sizes too large. Barefoot and bespectacled, which means he's either been painting or crying. It's hard to say, on today of all days. He sighs, "Hi."

"Hey."

"You really don't have to keep doing this. I'm not gonna try to off myself just because it's June 25th."

"Steve," Bucky sighs, shouldering past him. "How many times have I told you that this isn't some kind of suicide watch? It's not, alright? Maybe it was the first time, but…you're better now. I'm just tryin' to…be here for you, is all." He stops at the kitchenette counter, drops the contents of his grocery bag on it. "You want soup? How long's it been since you had a decent meal? I'm making soup." He holds up a container of matzo meal. "Matzo ball soup for the Catholic soul?"

Steve offers a thin smile, follows him into the apartment and closes the door then lifts himself onto his stool, which has been relocated back to its proper place underneath the bar counter of the kitchenette. "Sounds good, Buck. Thanks."

"You sure you're okay?" Bucky asks, assembling his ingredients—matzo meal, margarine (because this might be Brooklyn, but schmaltz is not something you can find in the chain grocery store), eggs, chicken broth, baby carrots and a stalk of celery. Steve watches with undue focus, like he's trying to distract himself. "You don't seem very okay."

Steve breathes out shakily. "It's been five years, Buck. She's been dead longer than I ever knew her."

Bucky sighs and stops trying to extricate the carrot from his bag, sets it down and leans on the counter, arms outstretched and locked. "Yeah, I know, pal. I miss her too." Not as much as Steve does, he knows, but sometimes just knowing that someone feels a little bit of what you're feeling—it's comforting.

"Sometimes I catch myself talking to her," Steve says. "Like she's still next to me, listening."

"Maybe she is," Bucky murmurs. He reaches across the counter and squeezes Steve's hand for a moment, then jerks his head in the direction of the ingredients. "C'mon. I'll show you how to make them."

"Oh boy, will it still be kosher if I touch them with my dirty gentile hands?" Steve wiggles his fingers and chuckles as Bucky rolls his eyes.

"That's not how kosher works and you know it. Besides, I haven't been kosher since I was sixteen."

"For shame, James Barnes."

Bucky nudges at him with an elbow and Steve lets a small, bittersweet smile rise onto his lips. Bucky wants to kiss him, but doesn't.

The work of making the matzo goes slowly, but in a good way. It's busy work, something to do with the hands. Something that isn't difficult, but has to be focused on. For years, it's been what members of his family have done when they want to clock out for awhile. When his parents were divorcing, his mom made matzo at least once a week. Back when Steve was doing so bad right after Peggy's death, Bucky took to commandeering the dorm kitchen and making enough matzo ball soup to feed a small army—or half a dozen hungry college students, which is more often than not what he ended up doing.

Now he shows Steve how to carefully mix the eggs and margarine, how to introduce the eggs to the matzo meal without risk of the dough getting grainy. He explains to Steve that the best matzo balls are dense and heavy, sinkers not floaters, and don't let anyone tell you any different. Steve smiles, once or twice, as he keeps the flow of words coming out of his mouth—stories and jokes and nonsensicalness, anything to keep Steve's mind off the date and on the moment, making matzo balls in this shitty excuse for a kitchen.

"They'll sit for two hours," Bucky says, sliding the pan with twenty-four uniformly sized matzo balls into the fridge. "Now's when you're supposed to make the broth, but I'm desecrating my family name and using store-bought chicken broth." His grandma has a recipe for chicken broth that involves an entire medium-sized chicken (Or, alternatively, six whole chicken legs) and it just seemed like a bit too much. "So I figure what we can do instead is, while those are setting…" He grabs his jacket, draped over the stool that Steve isn't sitting in. "If you want, we can go down to the cemetery. Visit your girl."

Steve runs a hand over his face, sighs down at the countertop. "I dunno, Buck."

"Yeah, I know. It's fine if you don't want to."

"No, it's not that. I want to, it's just…I usually go alone." He meets Bucky's eyes, and his are shinier than normal, watery. Bucky understands, then, what he's trying to imply. Steve hates people seeing him cry. He has ever since Bucky could remember. Even when they were kids, Steve did not cry when he scraped a knee or bruised an elbow. Once, he got his finger slammed in a car door and didn't shed a single tear as they took him to the hospital. That finger is still crooked, and Steve still seems to associate crying with some sort of weakness.

Which is ridiculously hypocritical, considering Steve has never once thought less of another person for crying.

"Hey," Bucky says gently, ducking his head to get on the same eyelevel. "I'm not gonna force you to go, but you know that…you know I'm with you, right? You don't have to be worried about what I'll think."

Steve looks back down to the counter, shoulders locked but not hunched, then nods after a pause of several seconds. He presses his lips together, which is another habit of his—a tell that Bucky looks for because it means Steve is down for whatever's happening—and nods again. "Yeah, alright. Are we gonna walk or take the subway?"

Bucky glances out the window. It's overcast and Bucky knows from the walk over that it's a little more chilly than normal for late June, but there was nothing on the forecast about actual rain and even if the sky does open up, Bucky happens to know that Steve is the proud owner of an umbrella, roughly the circumference of the damn sun, more than large enough to keep two fully grown men nice and dry. He says, "Let's walk," and pulls on his jacket.

It's a two-mile stroll that would take Bucky about twenty-five minutes on his own, but he takes shorter steps for Steve to keep in stride with him, and the walk is leisurely, so it takes about twenty minutes longer than it normally would. But it doesn't rain, and Bucky enjoys the companionable silence with his friend.

The cemetery grass is slightly wet when they walk across it; it hasn't been warm enough all day to evaporate the morning dew. She's buried in an older section of the cemetery, because someone in her family bought up a bunch of plots about thirty years ago and her family still hadn't used all of them up when she died. Of course, her body was never found; the casket had no body in it, but attendees of the funeral were encouraged to drop in mementoes they associated with her.

Among the mementoes in the casket below their feet are, Bucky knows: A lipstick case; a compass with a picture of her inside of it; a yearbook from East Brooklyn High School, graduating class of 2010, that itself contains a picture of Peggy and Steve with the dubious honor of _Least Likely Couple_ within its pages as well as a signature and a message on its flyleaf: _Steve my darling, save a dance for me_ ; and the empty ring box with which Steve had proposed only a month and a half before her flight never made it across the Atlantic.

The epitaph on her headstone:

MARGARET ALEXANDRA CARTER  
9th April 1992 – 25th June 2010  
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND PARTNER  
"BE NOT COY BUT USE YOUR TIME  
AND, WHILE YE MAY, GO MERRY,  
FOR HAVING LOST BUT ONCE YOUR PRIME  
YOU MAY FOREVER TARRY"   
WE LOVE YOU AND WILL MISS YOU  
REST IN PEACE

Peggy was a no-nonsense kind of gal. She liked her lipstick and her high heels, but she'd sooner lob a poetry book straight at your head before she started waxing about Shakespeare or Keats. There was only one poem she could abide by, and it had been oddly appropriate for her headstone.

They walk up to the headstone together, but Bucky soon leaves Steve's side to nudge at the rocks in a tree planter about twenty feet away, find one suitable and then return, drop it on the top of her headstone. He pats he smooth stone of it, says, "There you go, Peg." It's a secular cemetery and the maintenance people usually knock them off—out of spite or necessity, Bucky isn't sure—but it's there for now and it's his own offering, in some small way. His own way of letting her know he's here. That he's thinking of her.

Steve sits crosslegged in front of the headstone, and Bucky turns away out of respect, out of deference to Steve whose eyes he can see are already glassy. He pretends to be very interested in a robin in a tree and focuses on Steve's breathing rather than the words coming out of his mouth. He can't help but hear them, of course, and process their meaning, but it's the best he can do. He hears as Steve talks about Sam moving to New York—"You'd have loved him, Peg; you're cut from the exact same cloth"—and his reservations about graduate school. He talks about Clint's latest mishap with the kids he teaches archery to at a country club in the Hamptons, which he complains about daily and has _no fucking right to_ because everyone knows he loves those kids like they're his own and, even if he does have to wake up at six AM every day to get to Long Island by eight, he's still being paid better than Bucky is and Bucky actually _graduated_ college, thanks.

Just as he thinks all of this, Steve narrates it, and he has to chuckle to himself.

The robin flies away before Steve is finished talking, so Bucky reroutes his attention. He reaches for his back pocket, the location of his cigarettes, before remembering that he does not have one there. It's been two months since he smoked. It takes less effort than usual to banish the cravings. He crosses his arms and looks back towards the horizon.

There's a blonde woman with a bouquet of flowers cradled in the crook of her elbow walking up the hill towards them. Bucky spends a moment wondering which of the headstones she's heading towards before he realizes that she is making a direct beeline towards them.

She stops about twenty feet from them, parallel with the planter Bucky was digging around in earlier, and calls, "Steve?"

Steve whips around, hand coming up and damn near slapping himself in his attempts to clear his face of tears. The look of recognition is slow to come, but when it does it's with a fond expression, a gentle response of, "Sharon?"

Bucky realizes, with a start, that the woman is Peggy's cousin. She was sixteen the first and last time Bucky saw her, at Peggy's same-day wake and funeral. She's gained a good four or five inches since then, and her hair has either straightened itself out or been chemically treated, because she's almost unrecognizable from the bushy-haired, acne-plagued adolescent Bucky remembers her as.

"Hey," she says, continuing to come closer now that she has confirmed who is sitting in front of her cousin's grave. "I figured I might not be alone here today, but I was more expecting Uncle Geoff." Peggy's dad, Bucky fills in for himself. Bucky was a fly on the wall in Peggy and Steve's life as a couple, so he knows the family, even if they don't really know him.

"No, sorry, just me," Steve says, polite smile on his mouth. "I was just, uh, just about done here. Sorry—"

"No, God no, you're fine. Gosh, no, you're perfectly fine." She's near now, and seems to realize that Bucky is with Steve, rather than just near him. She says, "Hi," and adjusts the bouquet, obviously unsure.

"Uh…Bucky," he says, for lack of anything better. He holds out a hand, which Sharon takes and shakes. "Hi. We've, uh, we've met, but it was about five years ago, at…" he nods towards Peggy's grave, "so it's fine if you don't remember me. I probably wouldn't remember me either."

She gives a small smile and nods in return. "Yeah, of course. Hi." She glances between them and ventures, "Um, so…how are you, Steve?"

"Oh, I'm fine," Steve says, unfolding himself from the ground. "I'm, uh…I'm great, Sharon. Thanks for asking. You? I didn't even realize that you were back in the states."

"Oh, yeah. I graduated last month, and I'm looking for a job stateside now. Trying to be closer to home, you know? My mom had a heart attack last year."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, it wasn't…well, I'm not going to say it wasn't a big deal, because it was a _heart attack_ , you know, but it wasn't…catastrophic, or anything. Still, I wanna be closer to her. I really loved Oxford, but it wasn't for me, y'know, I always knew I'd be coming back home."

"Yeah, absolutely." Steve runs a hand down his face, glances over his shoulder at the building in the center of the cemetery. It's a mausoleum, but a huge one, and there are public restrooms inside. He jerks his head in that direction. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom, alright? I'll be back out in a minute."

He walks away, hands buried in his jacket pocket, and Bucky watches him go, vaguely aware of Sharon crouching to lean the flowers on the headstone. She brushes her fingers over the engraving, sighs a heavy sigh. Her eyes find the stone and she says, "What does that mean?"

Bucky says, "Huh?" and then, when she points to it, he says, "Oh, it's just…it's a Jewish thing. I'm Jewish. It's…it used to mean something, something about…telling people where a grave was because being near bones made you unclean, broke kosher or something, I can't remember. I stopped caring after my bar mitzvah and I wasn't being actively rewarded for knowing about Jewish things. Nowadays it just means… _I was here, and I pay my respects_."

Sharon favors him with a pretty smile. "Thanks."

"No problem."

There's a somewhat awkward beat of silence, the breed of silence that comes about when two people don't know each other and are forced to interact. Finally, Sharon says, "So…is it hard to date someone out of your religion?"

The question is a bit of a non sequitur, and Bucky isn't even sure why she's asking it, but he responds, "I don't really think about it, to be honest. My ma might have a thing or two to say about it, but she probably wouldn't _disown_ me over it, if that's what you're wondering. To be honest, I'm not really Jewish enough to care."

That gets a chuckle out of her. She says, "I see. I was just wondering, because I know Steve is Catholic, and I remember how much it bothered Uncle Geoff. Our family has been secular for as long as anyone can remember."

"Oh." Bucky scratches the back of his neck. That question makes a bit more sense now, if she thought Bucky was here in the role of supportive boyfriend rather than understanding best friend. "Steve and I…we aren't. Dating. I've known him since…forever, really, but we're not dating." It feels like this is the hundredth time he's had to explain it, even though this is really only the second since Sam asked in that club that one time, and that was over six months ago now.

"Oh." Sharon stands up and glances in the direction Steve had disappeared in. "That's too bad. I was kind of glad thinking that he'd found someone." She glances at him, face screwed up against the glare of the sun behind his head. "Does he? I mean, is he dating someone, or _has_ he?" When Bucky hesitates to answer, she shakes her head. "Sorry, I'm being nosy, I just…I heard about what happened, after Peggy died, and it really did break my heart. I guess I was just hoping he was doing better."

"Gotten over it, you mean?" Bucky asks, trying to keep all of the judgment out of his voice. "I can see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure this is the kind of thing you get over, you know? They were supposed to have a life together, and to have it taken from him, and so suddenly and in such a…a violent way? Yeah, I'm not sure that's something you get over."

"It's not… _getting over_ isn't the right term," Sharon sighs, shaking her head. "It's more…look, I miss Peggy. She was like the sister I never had. Our dads are brothers and we lived in the same neighborhood after her parents got divorced. We spent almost every waking moment of every summer until high school together. I miss her like a fucking _limb_. But the thing about missing limbs is, people _do_ learn to live without them. They live happy, functional lives without them. Would their lives be better if they still had the limb? Yeah, a whole damn lot _better_ , but it's not something they can hope for. You can't sit around and wait for the limb to grow back once it's gone."

Having that kind of wisdom bestowed upon him by an almost perfect stranger was not something Bucky was expecting to happen to him today, but he supposes weirder things have happened to him. So Bucky nods and says, "Yeah…you have a point. Yeah, thanks. That's something to think about."

Sharon nods to him, like she knows exactly what she's done—and she probably does, because Bucky might not know her well, but he can tell that she is wise beyond her years; she'd have to be, considering who her family is, who her cousin was. She says, "Tell Steve to email me whenever he wants," and walks away then without another word. When Steve returns, he glances at the bouquet and a guilty look crosses his face.

Because Bucky _cannot_ let this little punk feel bad for just happening to be here, mourning the loss of his fiancée on the anniversary of her death, he says, "She could only stay for a minute." It's probably as true as anything, considering how quickly Sharon left after leaving the flowers. "She said you should email her, though."

Steve takes another glance at the flowers and nods. "Yeah, alright. You ready to go?" He looks at Bucky then, and does the same half-grimace Sharon had in the face of the sun, but Bucky finds it almost irresistibly adorable when it's his face.

"Are you?" Bucky asks, not intending to budge until Steve is absolutely sure that he's said all he needs to.

Steve spends a second more staring at the headstone then, with a swipe below his eye, nods. With another firmer nod, he adds, "Yeah, let's go," and comes back to Bucky's side.

Halfway into the walk home, the sky opens up and they are almost soaked before they can get the umbrella over their heads. They're chuckling, soaked up to the knee from the splashing they have to do, by the time they get back to Steve's apartment. They squeeze into the narrow entryway to close the umbrella, take off their shoes, and shake the worst of the water from their clothes and hair. The sparkle is back in Steve's eyes, and they are pressed close, chest to chest.

Bucky wants to kiss him, but doesn't.

* * *

 

June becomes July, and July fades into August. Steve gets a gig as a student teacher for one of the professors he worked with in undergrad. It doesn't pay enough for him to quit his day job, but every little bit helps. In celebration, they buy two buckets of house paint—and several dozen tubes of acrylic—and he and Bucky spend an afternoon painting his living room blue to cover up the pockmarked plaster and peeling paint. Then Steve starts a mural on the far wall, working on it until Bucky pulls him bodily to the floor, laughing in his ear. Bucky goes down on him, doesn't tell him he loves him even as Steve moans his way through two orgasms, and doesn't kiss him.

He reaches four months since his last cigarette.

In early September, he is woken up by the dulcet tones of his phone vibrating frantically on his bedside table. He flops over, blindly reaches for it in the dark. It takes him two tries to slide the display towards the answer icon.

"Sam, do you have _any_ idea what time it is?"

"Is Steve with you?"

"No, it's like six in the morning, why would—"

"Okay, first of all, it's more like eight—look at your damn phone, man—second, there's some shit going down on the news right now and I don't know all the details, but I think it might—" There's a mumble from Sam's end of the line, a feminine whisper, and then he says, "Uh, here's Nat." Bucky is confused, because he thought Nat was in this house, but he doesn't have time to pose any sort of inquiry before Natasha proves herself to be very much present wherever Sam is.

"James," she greets, and her voice is gravely, like she herself has just gotten up—because not everyone has already taken three laps around their favorite jogging trail by seven o'clock in the morning, _Sam_ —but, at the same time, more alert than Bucky, and very firm, demanding to be listened to. Bucky doesn't even ask why she's with Sam—she doesn't give him a chance to before she continues, "A expedition team found the wreckage of an American Airlines Boeing 747 in a glacial shelf off Greenland. I think you and I both know that there's only one plane matching that description that went down in that area."

Bucky sighs. "Yeah."

"That's not all. There was…they've found evidence that…there were survivors. Of the crash. And they might have been alive for awhile before…before all of them died."

"Fuck," Bucky hisses.

"Yeah," Natasha agrees. "Obviously, they can't tell who's who at this point, but…someone needs to be with him right now. I won't be ridiculous and tell you not to let him get the information, because it's all over the internet and news stations, but…we were hoping you'd be able to…look after him today."

"He's not an infant, Nat. He doesn't need looking after."

"No, but he's probably not in the best mental state right now. He's our friend, he's your _best friend_. You need to take care of him right now." She sighs and it makes a hard, whooshing sound against the receiver. "Look, I…here's Sam, I'm giving the phone back to him." The line goes quiet except for the rustling of the phone being handed from one person to another.

"She doesn't sound happy," Bucky sighs. He swings his legs out of bed and sits on the edge of the mattress for a moment, face in his hand, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I guess I'll head over to Steve's now." Sam doesn't respond immediately, probably because he can hear that Bucky is not done speaking. He considers for a moment, then slowly ventures, "So, uh, Natasha was with you, then? All night?" He hadn't even noticed that she didn't return last night. She walked out the door at eight to "meet someone" and was still gone when Bucky turned in, sometime after midnight.

"Don't jinx it, man," Sam says. "It ain't a thing…not yet, anyway, and I'd kind of like it to be."

"Alright," Bucky says, satisfied with that answer for a moment. "I'll text you when I know what's going on."

It is, thankfully, a Saturday. He pulls on a pair of jeans—old and worn with a hole in either knee—and a dark grey fleece. In the entryway, he stoops to rather haphazardly pull on a pair of boots—one pant leg tucked in, the other out; what a fashion statement—then he's out the door. At just after eight in the morning in August, the sun is already high and the pavement is already heating up, but it's Saturday, and Brooklyn is still slumbering. He walks to Steve's apartment.

There's a delay of several minutes between Buck's knock and any sign of life from inside. It's enough to make Bucky anxious, but Steve thankfully deigns him with a response, even if it is, "Go away," before Bucky feels the need to start trying to break down the door.

"Steve, c'mon, you know I can't do that." He presses his forehead against the door, presses his palms to the back of his neck and lets his elbows hang.

"You can, actually. It's really easy, just turn around and _walk away_."

" _Steve_. Open the door."

"I don't want to talk, Bucky, I just want to be alone. Okay?" When Bucky doesn't respond, he hears a shuffle and a _fwump_ , like Steve is right on the other side of the door and has pressed himself against it. "Please, just go away." His voice is faint then, gravely.

"Steve," he says, still firm, "Open the damned door."

"Why should I?"

"Because the last time something like this happened, you tried to kill yourself."

There is a long beat of silence, and Bucky hates himself for it, hates the fact that he just said that. A reminder of his suicide attempt is the last thing Steve needs, especially considering that this new information, finding out what truly happened to Peggy, must be like losing her all over again.

Then Steve opens the door.

Bucky backs up, half because the door is no longer there to support him and half to better see Steve. He looks miserable, red-eyed and blotchy-faced. He takes one look at Bucky and his face crumples, tears pouring out of his eyes again, lower lip protruding in an agonized grimace. He whimpers, "Bucky."

"Oh, honey," Bucky whispers, stepping into the apartment. "I know."

"Bucky, they found her," Steve sobs, "and she was so alone and she died—she died—" he reaches out, gets his arms around Bucky's neck and his face into his chest. "Nobody went looking for them, n-nobody…Bucky, Bucky, she must have hurt so _much_."

Bucky does the only thing he can think to do: picks Steve up under his butt like a child, kicks the door shut behind him and carries his best friend to the sofa, where he sits and lets Steve cry, clinging to him, for what feels like—and what may actually be—hours. The curve of his neck goes sticky and his arm goes numb but he does not move. He rubs Steve's back, he kisses his forehead, he hums and sings, snippets of Ella and Billie and some pop standards that Steve is partial to and once, just because he knows how soothing a song in another language can be, he sings him a faltering version of a Russian lullaby that Natasha taught him once.

Finally, Steve calms down to a state that is more hiccup than sob. Bucky has gets him a cup of water and he drinks it, slowly and laboriously, trying to work it past the lump in his throat and not let it come back up. When he's done with it, he hands it back to Bucky, who keeps it in his hand in case Steve wants it again, and settles back against his side, with his forehead against Bucky's shoulder.

"Do you think she knew how much I loved her?" Steve whispers. "I loved her so much, Buck, I…" a noise, a half-sob, leaks out of his throat. Bucky knows it would be stronger if he had the energy left in him, the air left in his lungs. Bucky doesn't know how he didn't have an asthma attack. "I need to know that she knew how much I loved her, and now I never will."

"Stevie, shh. Shh, oh, baby, she knew how much you loved her," Bucky says, cheek pressed to Steve's hair, "she knew, sweetheart. Everyone who even looked at you two knew how much you loved each other. She knew, honey." He brushes his hand through the soft hair under his chin, pets him like he's precious because he _is_ , Jesus, he really is. "And even if she didn't—which she did, she _did_ —but even if she didn't, she knows now."

That sends Steve crying again, and Bucky wonders if he should have said that, but…it's a quieter kind of crying, gentler, cleansing. It comes to an end when Bucky realizes that Steve is pressing his lips, light and slow, against his neck. Bucky lets him for a moment, tilts his head to him because this is Steve's pattern—this is the way Steve deals with things he can't handle. He comes to Bucky, who he knows he can trust, and lets Bucky take his load for awhile. Then Steve is taking his face, and turning it towards his own, and then they're kissing.

They're damp, salty kisses that should be at least a little gross. Steve's face is hot, overheated with all the blood that's been rushing through it as he cries, and his mouth is equally hot, wetter than it should be with the drool of a long, hard cry. Bucky knows it should be disgusting, knows he should be pushing Steve away, but it is not and he does not. He utters a surprised noise into Steve's mouth, pulls him closer and tongues the swell of his lower lip, feels the tip of Steve's tongue against his own.

Steve opens his mouth. He tastes clean and faintly sweet.

He tries to pull away, whispers, "Steve—" but Steve grabs him by the nape of his neck, pulls him back. The sudden movement dislodges the plastic cup of water from Bucky's hand, the cup which he's forgotten he's even holding, and it spills over Steve's head and down his shoulders. It's probably only a few degrees below room temperature, but both of them have overheated skin, and it feels like ice. Bucky jerks and yelps, "Shit! Sorry, fuck—"

"It's fine," Steve says, shaking his head. He reaches down for the hem of his shirt, pulls it over his head. Bucky watches, cock throbbing, as the water trails down his neck, over his collarbone and down his chest. One droplet clings to a peaked nipple, a tiny rivulet trails underneath the sweet curve of his right breast to pool there, waiting to be lapped up by an eager tongue. Bucky stares, and moves his hands to Steve's waist, and lets his face be framed by Steve's long-fingered hands.

"Please," Steve whispers heavily, pressing their foreheads together, "just…please."

He shouldn't let Steve convince him, but he does. Mostly because he knows that, if Steve really needs this, Bucky would rather it be himself than anyone else. Also because Bucky has wanted this for a long time, longer than he can even admit to himself. He knows it's selfish—horribly selfish, but he can't bring himself to say no.

He sighs, "Alright," and slots their mouths back together. Their tongues slide together, sloppy, and Steve pulls him back until he's laying on his back, Bucky over him, and he spreads his legs, hikes his knees up on Bucky's hips and cants his hips up against Bucky's. Bucky is immediately and painfully hard. He pants against Steve's mouth, their lips dragging together, hitting noses and cheeks and chins as much as they hit lips. Steve reaches down between their rutting hips and opens Bucky's fly.

"Steve," Bucky breathes, hips still moving even though he knows he should stop, should be the voice of reason, " _Steve_."

Steve moans in his throat, fetches Bucky's prick out of his underwear and strokes it once, then he's spreading his legs further, shoving his underwear out of the way and—and guiding Bucky's cock inside himself.

"Oh— _OH_ —" he grabs Steve's hips, stops himself and Steve from moving for half a damn second, "Steve, what—do you—"

"Yes, I know what I'm doing, yes I want this, yes, _yes yes_ , I fucking need this, Bucky, I need to be fucked, please—I need to remember—remember what it feels like to be…" he throws his head back, digs his heels into Bucky's ass. "Please, please."

Bucky huffs out, presses his forehead to Steve's collarbone. Groans, "Fuck, Stevie, oh my God," and gets his hands under his knees, bends them up and buries himself in Steve's slick heat. Steve arches and cries out, wraps his legs around Bucky's waist and commences making sounds that Bucky has never heard from him—guttural, deep noises that seem to come from his damn _hips_ they're so deep. Bucky ducks his head and licks the water away from the curve underneath his breast, which tastes like skin and salt and always, no matter how recently he's showered, smells like Steve in its purest form.

When the water is gone, all lapped away, he finds a nipple and latches on, sucks hard. Steve whimpers frantically into his ear, presses his head closer. Bucky groans in response, entirely too overcome with the tightness around his cock, and presses his mouth back to Steve's.

Steve does something with his muscles—a kind of rolling, tightening and loosening movement that has Bucky panting wetly into his neck. Then he sucks a bruise there, lets Steve do the work for a second, getting his leverage on the arm of the couch.

"Yes, yes," Steve whispers, skin slapping against skin. A high, wet, whimpering gasp and then, " _Yes!_ " and it's wetter down there, all at once, but he doesn't stop moving his hips and Bucky doesn't stop either.

"You coming? Yeah, baby, did you come?" He reaches a hand down, finds the wet spot on the upholstery of the couch. Groans in his chest. "Yeah, you came, that's so good, do it again, let's see if you can do it again…"

"If you w-want me to do it again, you'll hafta—" he finds Bucky's hand, presses it down. "T-touch me—"

Bucky works his hand down between them, cups his hand over the softness of Steve's pubic mound, the cloud of coarse hair there, and slips two fingers down, spreads him open and then presses down, starts up a hard, circular motion. This he is more than familiar with, it's muscle memory and second nature. He knows just how hard to press, just where to press. Steve draws his legs up, plants his feet on either side of Bucky's knees and arches towards him, bends his head back and groans. Bucky moves his mouth from his chest to his throat, sucks on his apple, speeds up his thrusts. Steve grunts in time, _uhn-uhn-uhn_ , and he traces a hand along the smoothness of his under-thigh.

"God, Stevie," he hisses against the hollow of his throat, "Fuck, God, you have no idea how long I've wanted to do this, oh _fuck_ —years, baby, years—"

"Yeah," Steve whimpers, probably more in response to what Bucky's doing than what he's saying. He gasps. " _Yeah…_ "

"Yeah," Bucky confirms. "God, you're so beautiful, you really are. God, Stevie, you don't fuckin' know how beautiful you are, how much I—God, baby, I love you, I love you so fuckin' much that it fuckin' hurts—" His movements become frantic. He buries his head in the crook of Steve's neck and shoulder. "Oh _fuck_ …I'm close…"

"God yes, come for me, come inside me, Buck…"

"Ah-ah-ah," Bucky hisses, the fire in his belly cloistering suddenly and then, all at once, releasing. He says, "I'm coming, _fuck_ , there, I'm coming."

Steve comes then too, back arching and toes coming off the couch with it. This orgasm is a dry one, muscles contracting hard on Bucky's cock and clenching until, finally, he comes down with a shaky utterance and settles back into the sofa cushions. He lays there, still, for several moments, unmoving and unspeaking, eyes fluttering behind his lids as he pants.

It's as Bucky pulls out and watches his own semen leave Steve and pool onto the upholstery of the shitty sofa that Bucky recognizes the magnitude of what has just happened. It's a lot to take in, a lot of hairbrained things they've done in the last fifteen minutes, so he can only latch onto one at a time. The first topic his scrambled mind latches onto is, for some reason, the lack of condom. He swears under his breath, nudges at Steve. "Get up. Hey, Steve, stand up, you gotta get this outta you."

Steve swats him away. "If I stand up right now, I'll fall right back over. I just came twice." He has an expression on his face that matches Bucky's current emotional mosaic; startled, unsure, a bit frightened, any and all emotions in between, and hazy with sex. Even so, the next words out of his mouth are, "Bucky, stop. Calm down."

"Fuck, okay," Bucky sighs, because he recognizes the validity of that statement. He doesn't need Steve passing out, on top of everything. He also knows that something like _standing up after sex prevents pregnancy_ is some high school myth that he should have left behind himself, along with his entire high school experience. "Okay, uh…fuck, okay. I'm gonna get in the shower and then I'm gonna…what's the nearest drug store? Do they sell that, uh, that Plan B stuff at all of them or just some of 'em? Should I call to make sure they stock it?"

"Bucky, it's fine, it's not—"

"I hear that shit has a weight limit though. Is it an upper or lower weight limit? Do you think you're too light to take it?"

" _Bucky_. Shut up. It's fine. I'm not gonna get pregnant." He pushes at Bucky's chest until Bucky lifts up and away, then pulls his underwear back into its rightful configuration and closes his legs. Bucky hadn't even thought about the ridiculousness of having that conversation while he was still actively spreading Steve's legs wide, but now it's all he can think about. Jesus Christ, he wants to punch himself in his damn fool mouth about a dozen times.

"How do you know?" Bucky asks. "Fuck, Steve, what if I knocked you up? Fuck, I'd never be able to forgive myself."

"I _can't_ get pregnant, Buck," Steve sighs, running his hands down his face. "I'm pretty sure you need ovaries for that kind of thing, and I don't have any."

"Waddaya mean, you don't _have_ any?" He forgets sometimes, about what Steve is, because he's never thought of him as anything but Steve, his best pal, his best friend since they were babies, no matter what he did or didn't have between his legs. It's never really mattered to him, and it's not about to start, but he _has_ known Steve a long time and, for most of their lives, Steve has been chronically ill. Therefore, he knows Steve's entire medical history like the back of his hand. "You had ovarian cysts a few years ago, Steve. I know because I was the one who took you to all your appointments. No ovaries, no ovarian cysts, that's kinda how these things _work_ , pal."

"Yeah, exactly," Steve snaps, dropping his hands and giving the ceiling a glare clearly meant for Bucky. "No ovaries, no ovarian cysts. The doctors told me that they might come back and I said, okay, take them out."

"Oh," Bucky mumbles. He remembers taking Steve in for a surgery to do with the cysts, but he hadn't realized that it was to remove more than just the cysts. He sits on the edge of the couch, hands on his knees and prick still hanging out of his pants. He stares at the floor for several moments and then finally asks, "Why didn't you…tell me?"

Steve sighs. "I dunno. Because it's not any of your fucking business?" Bucky winces and continues boring a hole into the floor. Behind him, Steve sighs again. "Sorry, that was mean. I…I don't know why I didn't tell you. It just…I don't know. The doctor made me feel like an asshole, like getting rid of my ovaries meant that I was less than human. Which is…bullshit, I know, but there are still a lot of doctors that think if you have ovaries, you're just waiting to shove out some kids." He sighs, runs a hand over his face. "They only did it because the cysts would've made me infertile, anyway. I just…I don't wanna talk about it."

"Oh." Bucky scratches the back of his neck, brings his hand forwards and over his face, then finally stands and tucks himself back in, zips up. They've made a mess of the sofa, not that it was in anything close to pristine condition beforehand. It's shapeless and maroon and there are several splotches of darker color, wet spots from sex and the water Bucky spilled earlier. He retreats to the kitchen and returns with a rag, which he runs over the inside of Steve's thighs and then the couch, getting the worst of it off. As he takes it back into the kitchen, Steve sits up, jackknifes himself in the crook of the sofa with his knees under his chin.

"Listen," Bucky says, sitting down on the other couch cushion. "I, um…about what I said."

"It's fine, don't worry about it." Steve presses his forehead to his knees, drapes his arm over the back of his neck. "Nobody thinks clearly during sex. Especially not that kind of sex."

Bucky isn't sure if by _that kind of sex_ , he means a purely clinical aspect—penetrative sex, vaginal sex—or the abstract—fast, frantic, steeped in all the wrong emotions. Either way, it does nothing to reassure Bucky. He tries again, "I know that…and I wasn't. Thinking clearly, I mean, but—"

"Please don't," Steve sighs. He says it into his thighs, so Bucky has a hard time hearing him, has to strain. "Please don't tell me that you meant it. I don't want to hear it. Even if you did mean it, I don't want to know. So don't tell me."

This sends Bucky's heart sinking into his stomach. He draws a hand down over his face, looks across the room. It's nine o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, Bucky has just fucked his best friend, and Steve can't stand the idea that Bucky loves him. He doesn't know what to do with himself.

Steve clears his throat. "I need you to not be here right now."

"Steve—"

"Please." Steve turns his eyes onto Bucky, deep and blue. "I'm asking you as a friend. I need to be alone."

"Then I need you to tell me you don't hate me," Bucky whispers.

"Of course I don't," Steve murmurs. He reaches out one hand in a motion that he almost immediately aborts, pulling his arm back into the cradle of his body and legs. "Bucky, I…no, God. This doesn't mean I hate you. You gave me what I asked for, and I'm grateful. I just…I need to think."

"Okay." Bucky looks away, further into the room, then nods. "Okay. I'm gonna…yeah, okay. Please take care of yourself, Steve. Please."

"I will."

He doesn't rise to see Bucky to the door, just continues sitting there in nothing but his underwear. Doesn't meet Bucky's eyes when he looks back from the door, hoping for a reassuring flash of blue. Bucky leaves feeling nauseous and lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Steve and Bucky have intercourse. Steve consents explicitly, as does Bucky despite being unsure that Steve is in the proper emotional state to have sex. Because of this, both parties could be considered as dubiously consenting, but consent _is_ vocalized.  
>  \- Again, Steve's breasts are mentioned in a sexual context and but not to the extent of fetishization and only in passing.  
> \- Bucky panics after he realizes they haven't used a condom; he worries that Steve might become pregnant.   
> \- Steve assures Bucky that he can't get pregnant by telling him that he, at some point in the past, had his ovaries removed because of ovarian cysts. Steve also implies that his doctor for the operation misgendered him.  
> \- Steve is confirmed as being chronically ill for a majority of his life.
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always, feel free to follow me on Tumblr under the same username. Thank you as well for all the amazing comments I got last time around; I wish I could tell you how much just getting comments means to me. After working for months writing this story, it's a relief to have some feedback, so thank you so much.


	4. Chapter 4

Thus commences the longest month of Bucky's life. Where he's used to seeing Steve almost every day, that average is reduced to a mere once or twice a week, if at all. When he does see him, it's in fleeting glances: Steve leaving Sam's place as Bucky is arriving; Bucky comes into the sandwich shop Steve works at only for him to announce that he is going on break and disappear into the backroom; Bucky comes home one day to find Steve talking to Natasha at their kitchen table, and when he sees Bucky he quickly makes his excuses and leaves.

Their conversations are had almost exclusively in text, and even that stops mid-month when Steve's phone is shut off because he was late on a payment. Bucky isn't sure if he purposefully did not pay it so that he has a valid reason not to talk to Bucky, or if he is genuinely having trouble making the payments. Bucky wishes he knew. Bucky wishes he knew so that he can slip a twenty into Steve's wallet and they'll both pretend it was always there and didn't spontaneously appear overnight.

All together, It's the longest Bucky has ever gone without speaking to Steve. He tries—even without the conventional avenues of text and phone, he tries several times. He calls Sam and begs him for status updates and, even though Sam is wary—he doesn't want to get involved in _wharever drama is happening between y'all,_ which Bucky understands, but Sam seems to hear the desperation in his voice and eventually does award him with the begged for information. Yes, Sam has seen Steve. Steve was alive and well when Sam saw him. Just, apparently, ignoring Bucky. Bucky stops trying then, and waits for Steve to come to him. Every day that passes is like another pound added to Bucky's chest until it feels like he can't breathe.

He goes from four months nicotineless right back to smoking half a pack a day.

His sister calls one night and he stares at her contact image, considers denying the call and then thinks better of it. Becca won't stand for that kind of shit. Inside of Becca where a conscience should be is a smaller, angrier Becca, and Bucky does what he can to avoid its wrath.

He rolls over onto his stomach on his bed, puts the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hey, what are you doing for the High Holy Days?"

Bucky sighs into the receiver. "Working."

"You do realize that's sacrilegious?"

"Okay, but better question: you do realize I don't give a fuck?" Bucky sighs and rolls over as Becca splutters wordlessly into his ear. It's half put-on, but marrying a Jew and having a Jewish wedding has led to her relocating her sense of religion as of late. Bucky kind of misses college-Becca, who openly ate bacon and with whom he once had a two hour conversation about Wicca, but he realizes that she's trying to shed the trappings of young adulthood, even if she's really only emerging from young adulthood.

Eventually, Becca finds words to use. "So, okay, better idea: You tell Stark that you can work from home for a week, because I know it's something you can do—ninety percent of what you architect-types do is on your computers—and you come up to my place for Rosh Hashanah and stay for awhile. I haven't seen you in forever. Practically since my wedding."

"Okay, I've totally seen you since then. The only reason I haven't been visiting as often is because you got married and proceeded to move _two hours away_. I mean, I get it was for Paul's job, but was it really necessary?"

Becca sighs. " _Yes_. Paul is my husband, Bucky. It was important to him that he take this job, and it was important to me that he was happy. It's just…it's a thing. You'll understand when you get married."

He snorts directly into the phone.

There's a pause and then, "So…I'm gonna take that to mean that your prospects are pretty bleak right now, huh?"

"If that's your way of asking if I'm dating anyone, the answer—as it has been for _literal years_ , Rebecca Barnes-Proctor—is no." He sighs, presses his face into his pillow. "It's…I don't know, things are complicated right now." There is mutual silence for a few minutes, as Bucky pouts at the ceiling and Becca does something on the other end of the line—it involves some metallic banging and a bubbling sound, most likely cooking; she likes to call him while she cooks. Slowly, he says, "Steve and I had a fight. A bad one. He's not talking to me."

"Oh," she sighs. "Well…I'm sure things'll…sort themselves out. They always do." Another pause and then, "Do you wanna…talk about it?"

"No," Bucky groans, but then continues, "It's just…okay. So, last month they found…a plane crash in a glacier off the coast of Greenland."

"Right, yeah, I heard about that. They figure it was the plane that Steve's fiancée died in."

"Right. So, I went over to Steve's, and…shit happened, and…I…we…sort of slept together." He doesn't need to tell his sister that he and Steve have actually been quote-unquote sleeping together for upwards of five years because he doesn't really feel like explaining the intricacies of the arrangement. It's as close to the truth as he can get without sharing the grisly details with someone who came out of the same womb as him.

"Oh my God," Becca groans, "Bucky!"

"I know, okay? I know." He buries his head under his pillow and considers just leaving it there, letting Becca get all of her squawking out and only then picking the phone back up, but Becca would _know._ He doesn't know how she'd know, because that weird sixth sense apparently skips the males of the family, but he knows that she would be able to tell. He pulls his head back out, feeling like he imagines ostriches do, and grumbles, "But, like…okay, that's not even the worst part because he started it—"

"James, this is not a _he_ _started it_ kind of situation. Did you or did you not put your penis in your best friend?"

"REBECCA."

"Did your best friend as you to put your penis in him _?"_

"Oh my god, I'm hanging up, oh my God—"

"Putting your penis in other people is not a they-said-I-said type situation. This is not pulling pigtails, this is a consent issue." Her voice has gone quiet and low, and he knows she's deadly serious.

"Becca," he hisses, "what the fuck? Do you think I _raped_ Steve?"

"No, Bucky. I'm asking if either of you were really in a state to consent at that point in time?"

Bucky presses his face into the mattress. Whispers, "I don't know. I…neither of us was thinking. And I…told him I was in love with him, and he kicked me out. And he hasn't talked to me in a month. And I feel like I'm dying."

"Oh boy," Becca sighs, "does either of you think that you're being maybe just a little high school about this? I mean…" He hears the _whoosh_ of her sigh over the receiver—they're doing a lot of mutual sighing; it's that kind of conversation. "You love him, huh?"

"Yeah," Bucky rasps. "So much." He reaches down, finds his duvet and pulls it over his head so that he's completely enshrined, ready to wallow in his own misery. He thinks about his own actions and says, "You're probably right though, Becks…I'm being a little high school about this…but I wasn't lying when I said he's not talking to me. I've tried everything. I'm afraid he's never gonna speak to me again."

"How much of your lives have you two spent living out of each other's pockets?" Becca asks, and the metallic clang of her banging a spoon on a pot echoes down the phone line once again. "Lifelong friendships aren't something you drop like a hot potato. Give him time, Bucky. He's had a hard last few years and your feelings are probably a bit of a shock to him. I say to him, because anyone removed from the situation can tell that you two are crazy about each other."

"Shut up," he grumbles, "Steve doesn't think that way about me."

"Maybe not in so many words," she says, "but he feels something for you, Bucky." She's quiet for a moment. Bucky can hear the bubbling of her cooking in the background and the clinging of the dog's tags, the noises of domesticity that used to comfort him when he was a kid. She says, "Come stay with me for a few days. Take a break. Remove yourself from the situation and do some thinking. Steve will be okay on his own for awhile. I know you worry, but he's a big boy and…the way to solve this isn't laying yourself down on the sidewalk and asking him to walk over you, Buck. You've gotta take a stand at some point."

"He's not walking all over me—"

"He's being a _little bitch_ ," Becca snaps. "I mean, I understand being freaked out and shit, but what gives him the right to pull this passive-aggressive—"

"Okay, Becca, just stop before you say something you'll regret." Becca is one of Steve's biggest fans and has been ever since they were thirteen and she was twelve and Steve broke a guy's nose for trying to snap her bra strap. He knows that what's kicking in right now is her overprotective instincts, her need to stand up for her brother even if he's older than her.

"Fine," Becca sighs. "Just please come up, Buck? Paul would love to see you and I've got something I wanna tell you. Nothing bad, just something that's better said in person."

"That doesn't sound ominous," he mumbles, and then, "Yeah, sure. I guess I'll come. Saturday morning good?"

"Make it Friday night. Nobody in this house gets up before noon on Saturdays."

He chuckles. "Alright. See you Friday."

"See you Friday," she confirms, and then before he can hang up she adds, "I love you, Bucket," in a high, coaxing sing-song. Bucky wants to roll his eyes, but doesn't because, again—Becca would just _know_.

"Love you too, Beaks," he sings reluctantly. She's still laughing when he hangs up.

* * *

Steve student teaches a certain professor of fine arts' night class for him on Fridays. It's the most reliable place to find Steve nowadays, because he works very strange hours at the sandwich shop and Bucky doesn't feel right just going to his place randomly anymore, not when Steve is still being openly hostile to any attempts at contact. It's still strange for him, that his and Steve's relationship has disintegrated at such a rate that something he did without a second thought a month ago—and had been doing for literal decades—is now something he doesn't feel comfortable with anymore. The weight on his chest gets heavier.

Because the professor is tenured, he often leaves Steve to teach the class himself. It's nothing Steve can't handle, but Bucky knows he finds it annoying. It's a thirty-person class and it's difficult to give individual attention to thirty people at once—and art students need individual attention. He still manages it though, as Bucky knew he could. When Bucky knocks on the door to the classroom—which Bucky is familiar with, because it's one of the classrooms Steve used to have class in when _he_ was an undergrad—Steve is standing behind a tiny girl with huge glasses, gesturing to her painting with careful fingers. Then he looks up, and his brow knits when he sees Bucky. He says something to the class Bucky doesn't hear—likely, something like _Excuse me for a moment_ —and comes out the door.

"Hey," he says quietly, warily as he leans back against the door. "Um, I can't really talk right now. I'm working."

"Yeah, I know, I just…I would've texted you, but…" he shrugs, gesturing vaguely with his elbows and shoulders. Steve looks somewhat sheepish. "I'm, uh, gonna go stay with my sister. I just wanted to let you know that I won't be around for awhile."

"Oh. Uh." Steve runs a hand through his hair. "When are you leaving? How long are you gonna be gone?"

"Uh…I dunno," Bucky sighs, "things are…weird right now. I need to do some thinking. I'm gonna hit the road as soon as I leave here."

They meet each other's eyes and Bucky feels his own heart sink as Steve's eyebrows bow and turn down, pulling his face into a distressed configuration, one that Bucky has been programmed since childhood to eradicate with prejudice by whatever means necessary. He doesn't know how to do that when he's the cause.

"I just…c'mon, Steve. Don't look at me like that. It's obvious you don't want me around and I can't…I can't deal with that. I'm not gonna force my presence onto you. It's not fair to you or me, alright? Maybe we just need to…reevaluate what's going on between us, maybe change some things."

"Bucky," Steve says, protesting tone to his voice. "It's not that I don't want you around. I don’t want anything to change, I like what we are."

Bucky sighs, runs his hands down his face. "Steve…Steve, you need to understand. I'm not doing this to punish you, I'm really not. But I need to…look out for myself, okay? I understand that you don't feel the same way about me, alright?"

"Buck—"

"And I'm gonna try my best to get over it, because our friendship means more to me than…the idea of something that's never going to happen. So I'm going to get over it; I know I can. I just need some time. I need to not see you every day, and I need to…we need to stop having sex." He sighs, shrugs. "This isn't your fault. I opened my mouth, and it happened…but maybe it's for the better. Something had to give eventually. Something had to change. And now we both know how the other feels."

"No we don't," Steve says, and grabs onto the front of his shirt. "Because I don't know how I feel. How can you know how I feel if I don't?"

"I…" Bucky works his mouth, glances over Steve's head and into his classroom. Everyone's desk is facing away from the door, but the students seem to be wondering where their teacher has gone, and they're gaining a bit of an audience. He pulls Steve to the side, out of sight of the door. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I've been trying to figure out how I feel about you ever since that day," Steve says, "and the idea that I might feel the same way about you scares the shit out of me."

"Oh Christ, _Steve_ ," Bucky groans. He presses their foreheads together and Steve presses back. They rub their foreheads together mindlessly, Bucky feels Steve's hands dig into his back on either side, his blunt nails through the fabric of his shirt. "Steve, don't do this to me. Don't make me live on a maybe, don't make me chose between you and my own piece of mind because we both know I'll chose you and it…I can't live like this anymore. It hurts to feel this about you and hate myself for it."

"I'm sorry," Steve whispers, "I never knew how much I was hurting you."

"How could you know when I never told you?" Bucky whispers back. "I didn't care that I was hurting because I love you, but I can't do it anymore. I'm sorry, I'm just not strong enough. I have to get over you." He breathes in shakily. "I need to stop loving you. It's gonna take awhile and it's gonna be hard, because I'm pretty sure I've loved you half my damn life, but I can get over it." He's aware that this is not the first time he's said this, and he sounds more like a man trying to convince himself, but he more or less _is_. Part of him is afraid that loving Steve Rogers is his defining characteristic and personality trait at this point.

Steve sighs, wedges his head under Bucky's chin, nose in the hollow of his throat. "Okay…go to your sister's. Have a good time. Don't think too hard. Please. I'm gonna do some thinking of my own. I…I need to figure myself out, Bucky. Can you wait for that? I promise I'll have an answer when you get back, I just…can't right now. When you get back…when you get back, can we talk?"

"Yeah." Bucky mumbles. "Yeah, bud. Of course we can."

"Okay," Steve sighs. They pull away finally, pause still well within each other's personal space and exchange looks of furrowed-browed consternation. It is Steve who says, "I'll see you when you get back," and reaches up to wrap his hand around the back of Bucky's neck, pull him down for the softest peck on the lips. Bucky's heart jerks in every direction.

"Bye, Stevie," Bucky says, stepping quickly back. He doesn't understand why it seems like such a goodbye, why he feels actual pain as he leaves his best friend behind him for the first time and runs a hand down his face, still feeling the shadow of Steve's lips on his. His truck is parked in the second of two parking lots beyond the building, and even the nip in the early-winter air does not sap the warmth from Steve's kiss. He hops into the truck and puts it in gear, pulls out the parking lot and onto the street.

It's a two hour drive to his sister's in New Jersey, and he barely makes it two minutes into it. Still preoccupied with the events of the last ten minutes, he doesn't even notice the van screeching towards him until it bashes into his left side.

* * *

The swim towards consciousness feels like it takes years, and when he finally gets up the willpower to open his eyes, Becca hovers in front of him, brows knit and small hand scrunched up in his much bigger one. Her hair is pulled back in a cacophonous jumble that usually means it's started to frizz and her clothes are rumpled like she's been sitting for a long time. He's abruptly reminded of road trips when they were kids, driving eight hours straight to a campground where the air was fresh, slumped together in the backseat. Then he remembers that she lives two hours away, and realizes that his body is numb in a way that says it he'd be screaming in pain if he didn't have some kind of heavy-duty painkillers running through him.

"Hey," she says, "Hey, hi. How are you? Hey, shh, you're fine. Hi."

"Beck?" he rasps.

"Yeah," she coos, squeezing his hand, "it's me. I'm here."

He squeezes his eyes closed against his swimming vision and pries his eyelids back again, tries to move his left arm and finds himself unable. "What…?"

"You had an accident," she says gently. "Another car crashed into your truck and it flipped. Your left arm and leg are broken and you probably have a concussion from the airbag, but you'll be okay now that you're awake. You're in New York Presbyterian. It's about four AM on Sunday morning." She reaches up and strokes his hair back from his face. "I called mom and dad and they were here for awhile yesterday, but I told them to go home because there was really nothing for them to do. Steve went to get the nurse when you started waking up."

"Steve's here?" he whispers, trying to see the door around her.

Before she can answer, a brunette nurse in green scrubs enters the room. She has a pretty face and a kind, firm voice when she says, "Mr. Barnes, I'm Maria, I'm your nurse. I know you're tired, but now that you're awake, I need you to stay up for a few more minutes so that I can ask you some questions, okay?"

"Bucky," he says.

"I'm sorry?"

"My name," he says, "It's Bucky. Call me Bucky."

"Alright, Bucky. Can you tell me the month and year?"

"It's, uh, 2015, and…it's still September, right?"

"Indeed it is," Maria says, and scrawls something on her clipboard. "Alright, any nausea or dizziness?"

"Um…" He takes stock of himself, of his stomach and his head, and eventually shakes out a no. The room tilts a little bit. He groans. "Maybe…maybe just a little. Dizziness."

"Alright. On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the dizziness?"

"Uh…like three?"

"And your pain level? Again, on scale of one to ten."

"Two, I guess." The numbness has given way to a kind of hollow ache, but nothing close to what he thinks he really should be feeling, if Becca is right and an unknown number of bones are broken on the left side of his body.

"Good, that's good." This entire time, Maria has not looked up from her chart, but now she does. Her eyes are clear and broadcast her attentiveness, her willingness to absorb to the answers to the questions she asks instead of just letting them coast off her forehead. "How much do you remember from before your accident?"

He sighs, squeezing his eyes closed. Part of him doesn't want to talk about it, but he knows that lying to his nurse would be a bad decision. "I, uh…went to talk to Steve…I went to talk to Steve and we had a…conversation. And, uh, it wasn't…it was a personal conversation, and I guess it made me kind of…distracted. Um, I remember…getting into my truck, and pulling out of the parking lot. I think…I think I ran a red light." He tries to move his left arm again, maybe to cover his eyes with it, but again finds that he can't move it. He glances down and realizes it's in a cast all the way up to his shoulder. He groans. "I, uh…is the other driver okay?"

It isn't the nurse or Becca who answers, but that familiar deep voice from somewhere near the doorway. Bucky looks up to set eyes in Steve, who looks solemn and rumpled—but not in that soft, sweet way Bucky has come to love; he, like Becca, looks like he has been sitting in one place for a long time, doing far too much worrying and not nearly enough sleeping. Steve says, "I don't know who ran what light, but the collision was so loud that we heard it inside the building. I ran outside to see what happened. The only vehicle on the road was yours." He crosses his arms and leans on his side against the door, doesn't take his eyes off of Bucky's. Bucky closes his eyes and tilts his face into his pillow.

"Alright," Maria says softly. "He almost definitely has a concussion, but that was more or less a given. The best thing for him right now is rest. The shift turns over in about two hours, so I'll come by one more time before the day nurse takes over." She pats Bucky's shoulder. "Rest up, Bucky."

"Thanks," he mumbles, slitting his eyes open to look at his sister once the nurse is out the door. He mumbles, "Hey, Becks?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm thirsty," he mumbles, more to get rid of her than anything—but there is an uncomfortable cottony feeling in his mouth that he's more used to associating with hangovers than hospital visits. Of course, most of the time he's on the other side of the hospital visits. "Could you be, like…the best sister in the history of sisters and get me some water?"

Her smile is gentle and shaky when she nods, and he feels the guilt wash over him as she walks out. He knows he must have put her through hell and back.

Steve too, if the way he's still standing on the other side of the room and trying not to meet Bucky's eyes means anything.

"You should get some rest," Steve says, when the silence goes on for too long.

"I will, I just…uh…c'mere, for a second." He holds out his hand, tilted down and to the side with his fingers out, clearly an invitation for Steve to take it. He comes closer, but doesn't take Bucky's hand. Bucky lets it drop back to the bed after a few seconds. Bucky murmurs, "Sit down, alright?" and waits for Steve to take Becca's abandoned seat. He breathes in deep and waits for Steve to meet his eyes, asks, "Are you alright?"

"Am I alright?" Steve mutters, a tone of incredulity coloring the question. "What about you? Jesus, Buck, I'm not the one who…who got in a car accident. I'm…I'm fine, yes. Of course I'm fine, I…" He leans over and drops his forehead onto the heels of his hands, groans from his chest. "Jesus, Bucky. Are _you_ okay? Because when you…I saw that wreck and I saw you and I…you looked dead. You really did, and for a second everything—my entire world, Buck—just…stopped." He looks up and, as Bucky watches, his eyes well up. He rolls his eyes up, letting several of them go, and thickly whispers, "I'm sorry, Buck."

"For what?"

"For…putting you through that when I…" He shakes his head, cheeks going blotchy in preparation for tears. "I know what it feels like now and…and I…it feels horrible." His hand flails next to his head. "God, Bucky, I'm so stupid."

"No you're not," Bucky murmurs, and then, "Why do you say that?" because, perhaps due to his concussion, he can't understand why Steve has come to that conclusion. He's the stupid one. He's the one who probably totaled his car and is going to send his insurance premiums sky high.

Steve sighs, drags his wrist over his right eye. "Because I…I've spent all this time thinking that if I didn't…if I didn't let history repeat itself, if I didn't…" he waves his hands around, "let myself _feel_ that for another person again, that I wouldn't be hurt again. That I would never be so…completely lost and desperate that I didn't…" He leans over, presses his face into his hands again. His shoulders shake. "God, fuck, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Bucky mumbles. He reaches out and just manages to get his hand on Steve's head. "Hey, shh. It's okay. You're alright." He leaves his hand there until Steve turns away, looks off towards the window. Bucky can see the red rim around his eyes even at this angle. "Steve. Hey, please tell me what's going on?"

Steve takes in a shuddering breath. Runs a hand down his face. "I, um…I guess I just figured that…if things stayed the same, if we didn't kiss or…live together…if we didn't date, if I didn't let myself… _fall in love_. With you. It wouldn't hurt as much if…" Bucky sees his jaw tense. He shakes his head, cards his fingers through his hair, flips his bangs back over the top of his head. "I was wrong."

It feels like the world stands still. A buzzing starts up in his ears. "What're you saying, Stevie?"

"Losing you would hurt just as bad if I was in love with you or not," Steve says, eyes on the window instead of on Bucky, "so what's the point in trying to stop myself? At this point, I'm not even sure that I'm not there already."

They are silent, and the buzzing in Bucky's ears heightens in pitch and volume. Before he can say anything in response, before he can get his thoughts together or ask Steve to _look at me, please, Jesus_ , Becca comes back in a flurry of movement, a bottle of water in one hand and a little cup of orange juice in the other. She sits down on the edge of the bed and holds them out for him to chose.

"Hi, sorry," she says, "I had to go halfway across the damn hospital to find the vending machine. Then as I was coming back, I stopped by the nurse's station to ask if they had any juice because I thought you might want something sweet. So, uh…which one?"

Bucky glances around her to find Steve, instead of focusing on which option he wants. Steve meets his eyes finally, runs a hand through his hair, and rises. He steps to the doorway, pauses with his hand on it and his face tilted over his shoulder.

"I'm going to go…go home and change, take a shower," he says. He stands there for a moment, like he's going to say more, then rounds the doorway. A few seconds later, even his footsteps can't be heard anymore.

Becca says, "I'm surprised he left so quickly after you woke up. He came here with the ambulance and hasn't left since." Realizing that he is not going to pick a drink—perhaps even realizing that he'd sent her on a bit of a fool's errand and choosing not to mention it for once—she puts them both on the rolling tray at the foot of the bed and turns back to him. Her hand reaches up into his hair, which must be oily as fuck. She doesn't seem to care, as she brushes it back from his forehead. She says, "I need to tell you something. You awake?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. He tilts his head further towards her and makes a point to open his eyes wide. "What's up?"

She smiles. It's an impulsive thing, one that curls up onto her face all at once. She says, "I'm, uh…I'm pregnant." Her smile gets wider. "You're gonna be an uncle."

"Hey," he whispers, and a grin to mirror hers sneaks onto his face. "Hey, that's…wow, that's amazing."

They smile at each other for a few moments, until Becca's face crumbles and she raises one small fist, thumps it against Bucky's uninjured side and hisses, "Don't you ever…do that to me again. Goddamn it. I'd never be able to tell this baby what kind of guy their uncle was, you understand? You need to meet them for yourself. I need my big brother. I need him around for a long, long time."

"Okay," Bucky murmurs, and scoots over slightly on the bed, pulls her up onto the bed with him. She puts her head on his chest and he fits his chin over her head, like so many nights when they were kids and one of them had a nightmare. He pats down her hair and murmurs, "I'm sorry."

"You're such an idiot," Becca whispers. There's a pause, and then, "Steve's in love with you."

He sighs; deflates with it, compresses back into the mattress and feels the weight of everything bear down on him as he fixes his sore eyes on the ceiling. "I know." He almost adds _And he doesn't_ , but he's already dropping back into unconsciousness.

* * *

His visitors rotate rapidly as he sleeps off his concussion over the next several days. He falls asleep with Becca laying beside him and wakes up alone in the bed to morning light filtering through the window and Sam's gentle smile. He offers the orange juice, now with a little straw puncturing the foil cover. Bucky finishes the juice and talks with Sam until his eyes drift closed again. When he next wakes up, it's his parents and more of the same sentiment he experienced from Becca— _Don't you ever do something so foolish again, James Buchanan_ followed by, seconds later:  _Oh, my baby boy, we were so scared_ . He does not stay awake nearly as long for this, possibly because his mother's babbling is inherently more exhausting than Sam's quiet, unobtrusive presence from earlier. Also maybe a little bit out of spite, because he's tired of everyone acting like it was his idea for a sixteen-seater van to crash into his tiny green pickup.

He falls back asleep and when he wakes up he finds Natasha, loaded down with several changes of clothing for him. She doesn't say anything, just clicks over to him in her wedge boots—the sound of which might be what woke him up in the first place, come to think of it—and sets her hand on his head. It isn't a stroke, not quite; nothing like Becca's affectionate, frantic petting from however long ago it was he first woke up. She leaves her hand there for several minutes, then leans down and gives him one of only a few embraces he can remember ever receiving from her. He wraps his good arm around her small waist and pats her back, aggressively ignores the single, low sniff she delivers into his neck before she pulls away. She sits in the chair beside his bed and stays with him until the nurse comes in to help him shower.

The following day, it's more of the same. When he wakes up, Becca has returned with what seems to be half their damned family. Becca, his parents, Becca's husband, three of his cousins and one aunt are all crowded into his room. Maria Hill returns, apparently on afternoon shift this particular day, and all but implodes on the spot. In the interest of not witnessing the birth of any more cattle, Bucky tries to usher his family out of his room as efficiently as possible without getting up from his bed. When he finally succeeds and it is only Becca, Paul and his mother left in the room, Bucky almost immediately descends back into slumber and stays there for the rest of the day, more or less.

He has brief flashes. Thor and Jane make an appearance, which Jane cuts short because _You're obviously tired_. Thor's weird brother lurks outside the door for reasons unknown but which Bucky thinks might have something to do with some kind of parole deal.

There is a 50/50 chance that he imagines a visit from Clint, because he honestly can't remember him being present for more than a few minutes. He's gone as soon as he came, and Bucky only vaguely remembers him by the fact that he managed to knock over _everything_ in the room in the short time he was there and hiss, "Aww man," to himself every time.

His doctor, a rumpled and bespectacled resident-type named Banner pops in once or twice. He doesn't linger, although it's obviously not from distaste. He smiles easily at Bucky as he jots down his vitals onto a clipboard.

Dum Dum, Jim and Frenchie show up with a bottle of rum, which they explain was originally intended for him but which they drank half of on the way here. He sends them on their way before Maria can have another conniption.

His boss—or, more probably, his boss's wife, who secretly runs his business and his life—sends him a bouquet of Get Well Soon flowers and, more importantly, a bag of cookies that boast the name of a very popular and very expensive kosher bakery. Bucky knows now that if he is ever invited to the Starks' for dinner, he's going to have to pretend to be kosher because he's never going to be able to explain that he isn't and hasn't been to a woman who must have dished out probably an entire McDonalds employee's monthly salary for a baker's dozen of these confections.

On his fifth day in hospital, three days after he wakes up, Steve finally shows back up about an hour before visiting hours end. The wave of relief that floods Bucky is almost comical, but his own awareness of how ridiculous it is doesn't stop it in the least. He goes from half-asleep to completely awake in an instant, taking in Steve's appearance—a grey undershirt and a blue shirt Bucky vaguely remembers lending him several months ago. The undershirt is stained with paint, but in a charming, almost-artsy way that one might have thought purposeful if they didn't know Steve, didn't know his penchant for getting as much paint on himself as on the canvas. A cream-colored knit cap covering his blond hair, faded jeans and canvas sneakers.

All Bucky can think to say is, "You're wearing my shirt."

Steve smiles. "Hello to you too." He draws closer to the bed, comes to a stop with his hand on the corner near Bucky's foot. He tucks a hand into his pocket and sighs, says, "Um, so…I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Being an asshole."

Bucky shakes his head, makes grabbing motions towards Steve. He comes closer, but not by much. Close enough, though, that Bucky can strain far enough to get his hand. "Steve, you're not—"

"Hush," Steve admonishes. "I'm talking now. I need to explain myself." Finally, he sits down. He gets himself in the nook of Bucky's body, rests an elbow on his knees and says, "Sam read me the riot act. Told me that I was being a coward. Which I kind of am." Bucky resists the urge to contradict him, just sets a hand on his knee when he brings his legs up to fold them on the mattress, crisscross like elementary school. Sometimes, Bucky remembers the little kid in a second hand blue dress and scraped knees Steve used to be. Sometimes the memory hits him straight in the chest and Bucky wonders if he was in love with Steve even then.

"You've sat next to hospital bed after hospital bed with me," Steve says, "and the one time you need me to do the same for you, I run away with my damn tail between my legs." He brings Bucky's good hand into both his own, brushes his lips over his knuckles—two of which have healing scabs on them, but Steve doesn't seem to mind—and lowers Bucky's hand into his lap. "I don't care what's going on between us…I'll always be your friend. If you need me, I need to be with you. It doesn't feel right any other way." He looks down at Bucky's hand, and Bucky indulges him by spreading his fingers. Steve smiles. "Okay, there. I've said my bit. You can stay whatever you want now."

Bucky stares at him, muzzy for a moment. Slowly, he says, "I'm…so hyped up on painkillers that I can't even think straight. But we…what you said to me the other day stuck with me, and I've been thinking about it, and I think that as soon as I'm not completely bonked on morphine, we need to…talk about this. About…y'know, us." He doesn't know a less cliché way to put it, but Steve doesn't seem to mind. He nods slowly, tracing Bucky's fingers with his own. "Until then, I'd like it if you'd stay. And talk to me."

After a moment of shifting his jaw, fixing his chin in mock-deliberation. It's an expression Bucky is familiar with. He nudges his fingers into Steve's belly, tickling, until Steve shows his teeth in an amused smile. "Yeah, Bucky. Of course."

He stays well past visiting hours. The nurses don't even try to make him leave, just make him move when they need to check Bucky's IV or casts.

When he falls asleep, it's with Steve sitting in the cradle of his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As this chapter is less explicit, the only thing I feel I need to warn for is a very brief misunderstanding wherein Bucky thinks his sister is accusing him of rape. She is not, and the misunderstanding is cleared up quickly, but I felt it needed to be mentioned.  
> However! If there is something in this chapter that you feel needs to be warned for, please let me know so I can update my notes!  
> Thank you for reading! As always, feel free to join me in the hole I've dug for myself on tumblr (dot com) under the same username. It's a very nice, roomy hole.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very explicit; please read the end notes if you're concerned!

He stirs at dawn and Steve is still there, sleeping with his face smashed into open-mouthed unattractiveness next to him on the pillow. He blinks several times to bring the room into focus, takes note of both the return of his own cognition—that is, his brain feels much less drug-addled than it has for the last three days—and the presence of Maria, whose fiddling with the IV is likely what woke Bucky up. She catches sight of him at the same time. Her eyes roam over Steve as she murmurs, "We don't make a habit of kicking out family members and partners, but he'll have to check back in at the shift change. It's just policy."

He knows he should correct her in her obvious assumption that Steve is his partner, but it would likely get Steve kicked out. Also, a selfish part of him just wants to pretend for a moment. He nods and says, "Alright, that's fine." He watches her fiddle with the IV, then ventures, "Did you take me off the meds? I feel less muggy."

"We reduced your dosage," Maria says. "Doctor Banner wants you up and walking within the next couple of days, so we're going to wean you off the morphine and start administering you an oral painkiller. Probably something over-the-counter, ibuprofen or acetaminophen."

He nods and glances back down at Steve, watches him sleep as Maria fusses around elsewhere in the room. When she finishes swapping out the drip bags, she takes a glance at the IV where it connects to Bucky's arm, mentions something about having a nurse come in and help him shower when the shift turns over.

"Oh, uh…" He knows he's blushing as he focuses on the corner of the room and tries to ignore it. "I think I'm actually…gosh, I'm feeling a lot better? And, y'know, I think I can probably shower on my own today. Just gimme one of those, ah, those bags to put over my casts and I'll—I'll be fine on my own."

Next to him, Steve snorts. Bucky thinks it's one of those sleep noises he's prone to—Steve doesn't snore, but he talks and hums and does just about everything else. The snort wasn't the product of slumber, though. He opens his eyes and mutters, "You'll slip and kill yourself if you try to shower on your own."

Maria says, "You should listen to your boyfriend," and Bucky feels alarm rush through him.

Steve takes it in his stride. He says, "That would be a first," and grins, sleepy-smug as he stretches like a cat, toes of his sneakers pointing towards the railing and shoulders arching back. He holds this position for a moment, gapes his mouth in a wide yawn then settles again, rests his hand on Bucky's belly and his ear against Bucky's shoulder. Bucky tingles everywhere Steve touches him, sleep-warm and soft. He blinks several times to focus and then, slowly like he's still half asleep, he asks, "Would it be okay if I help him?"

Maria glances between them, a set to her mouth like she wants to refuse. At the last moment, she glances at her watch and sighs, "Look, I go off shift in an hour. As long as there's someone in there with him to make sure he doesn't go face-down into the tiles, I don't care. But you'll have to do it before I go off-shift because I can't make another nurse responsible for what I tell you."

"Alright." Steve sits up, stretches again and slides off the bed. His hat has fallen off at some point and now lays on the pillow next to Bucky, but he doesn't put it back on. Instead, he lowers the railing on the side of the bed and shifts it into an upright position with the ease of someone who has been in many hospitals in their life—the son of a nurse or a chronically ill person, take your pick—and helps Bucky get into a standing position, up under his shoulder on the left side, hand on his chest. Maria leaves the room and Steve walks him into the bathroom and sits him down on the shower seat. The shower is entirely open, with a curtain to cordon it off from the rest of the bathroom. The water trickles along a very shallow decline and into a drain in the middle of the bathroom.

Bucky frowns around, at the walls and at his two casts and at Steve, who's taking off his overshirt, shoes and socks. "I feel like a fucking invalid."

Steve says, "Now you know how I feel half the time," and leaves the room for a moment to place his shoes someplace safely out of dodge. When he returns, his jeans are rolled up to the ankle and he has the bags for Bucky's casts in either hand. He grabs the hem of Bucky's shirt and lifts it over his head, throws it into the corner of the room.

Properly cowed, Bucky mumbles, "You know I don't think of you as…an invalid…it's just what I feel like right now." Steve reaches down to undo the drawstring on his sweatpants and he pushes back the shame that tingles at his eyelids. "I mean, fuck, I can't even get my own pants off."

"I know," Steve says gently, "believe me, I know. You feel helpless and embarrassed and like you're never going to be able to do anything for yourself again. But you will. You'll get better. It's just going to take some time and some help." He takes some of Bucky's weight so that he can move his hips off the chair and get his pants down. Steve works them gently over the cast and throws them the way of the shirt, and helps him get the showering bags on over his casts.

Bucky feels strangely vulnerable, sitting in front of Steve naked like this. It's something that's happened about four hundred times, but it's uncomfortable for the first time. Possibly knowing how he feels—almost definitely, considering how many times Bucky has helped Steve bathe, has seen Steve nude in a completely sexless context—and in a bid to distract him, Steve says, "I'm going to come stay with you for awhile when you get out of here."

"Why?"

"Because your house has _stairs_ ," Steve mutters, rolling his eyes, "and your bedroom is on the second floor. That's going to be a problem. And Natasha can't be home with you all the time."

"And you can?" Bucky snorts. Steve turns on the water then, and due to the seat's position, he gets hit right in the face with a blast of cold water. "Fuck! That's freezing!"

"Sorry," Steve says, somehow managing not to sound sorry at all. He twists the tap until the water is just on the right side of too hot and stands safely out of the spray as Bucky tilts his head back, runs the water through his hair with his good hand, lets the water run over his chest and down between his legs, onto the seat and then onto the floor. Steve turns the water off again when he's good and wet, picks up the soap and a washcloth from the sink and hands it to Bucky. "Here, clean yourself while I shampoo your hair."

Bucky does so, halfheartedly running the washcloth over his skin. Steve works the shampoo into his hair slowly, massaging it into Bucky's scalp with his long, nimble fingers. Bucky stops moving altogether after a moment, just sits there with his hands in his lap and Steve's fingers in his hair. At some point, his hands start a slow, meandering path down the sides of Bucky's scull, finding his neck and the crook of his shoulder and then his thumbs find the twin knots in Bucky's shoulder blades and _press._ Bucky can't help but groan, relieved from the absence of tenseness he hadn't even realized was present. The water begins to cool on his skin, but he doesn't say anything. Steve's hands are warm.

It may be hours or only minutes that Steve works his hands over the tangled muscles in Bucky's back—he feels like he's floating in some timeless void where he only exists the places where Steve is touching him. He's aroused when Steve finally pulls away and pulls down the showerhead, turns it back on clicked to a low, gentle setting that patters against Bucky's head like raindrops when he holds it close. Steve gets the water out of his hair then hands it to him, tells him to rinse himself off even though Steve could really do it himself. Bucky supposes Steve doesn't want him to feel completely useless, is only doing the few things Bucky cannot do with only one good hand.

Bucky watches him carry the soap and shampoo bottle over to the sink and set them back on the counter. He picks up the conditioner bottle and frowns at it over his glasses, asks, "Are you interested in…citrus and sage scented conditioner?"

"Uh…no," Bucky says, staring at the showerhead in his hand, then back at Steve. He has his back turned. Bucky turns the showerhead over to a harsher setting, one that will have better range. "I don't really…condition. Hey, Steve?"

"Wha—" Steve doesn't even get to finish his about-turn before there's a jet of water hitting him in the face. He writhes wildly, like he's being sprayed with a hail of bullets rather than water, and falls back against the sink. Bucky lowers the showerhead and cackles at the look on Steve's face. His eyes are just about popping out of his face with outrage, glasses slid all the way down his nose. His shirt is soaked and his hair is clinging to his forehead and in front of his eyes. He holds his arms out to his sides at strange angles. Bucky giggles at the water dropping off his fingertips.

"Bucky…" he hisses.

"Stevie," he responds. He doesn't even try to wipe the shit-eating grin off his face.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't leave you here for the day nurse to find?"

"Well, uh…have you considered…" He turns the showerhead on him again. Steve swats at the water as if that's actually going to keep him from getting wet, advances across the room. When he reaches Bucky, he covers the nozzle with his hand which has the effect of, firstly, sending water _absolutely everywhere_ , and secondly sparking a wrestling match that results in Steve getting absolutely soaked.

"You think you have the upper hand," Steve growls—or tries, but he's really laughing too hard to be convincing about it, "but who's the one who has only one arm? _Not me_." He turns the showerhead on Bucky. "I will shove this showerhead down your throat and watch you _drown with a smile on my face—_ " As it turns out, death threats are very hard to take seriously when the person issuing them is A: cackling and B: straddling your lap.

"Fucking _try it_!"

To Bucky's surprise, Steve actually does try to get the nozzle in Bucky's face. He grabs onto it with both hands and tries to twist it around. It hits Bucky's chin, but nothing else. Steve hisses, "Give me— _gimme the showerhead—"_ even as Bucky keeps tugging it back to his own chest, turning it back around towards Steve. Possibly to get a better angle, Steve goes from standing over Bucky's lap to kneeling, knees on either side of his hips and bum resting on Bucky's knees.

At this point, Steve realizes that the faucet handle is within reach. He strains over Bucky's shoulder and switches the water off. Without the rush of it hitting the tiles, their panting is too loud in their own ears. Steve reholsters the showerhead, huffs against Bucky's neck and then pulls away, leans back and runs a hand through his dripping hair. His shirt has gone see-through, his nipples red and erect in the cold air coming through the vent above them. Bucky tries not to look, because he isn't really sure he's allowed anymore.

"These are the only clothes I have," Steve mutters. He doesn't seem incredibly upset about it. He's still letting out a chuckle every few breaths and he's beautiful as he closes his eyes and licks the water off his lips. "You gonna lend me some?"

"Yeah, of course," Bucky says. He leans back against the wall behind him, rests his good hand on the seat next to Steve's knee because he isn't sure where is an appropriate place to put it. "Even though you've never returned a single shirt I've lent you and I can't even borrow your clothes in return."

"Oh, sorry," Steve says, eyes popping open with a look of mostly exaggerated incredulity, "do you want to try squeezing your extra-large muscles into a size small? Be my guest, here—" He reaches for the hem of his shirt and peels it halfway up his torso.

"Steve," Bucky laughs, grabbing into it and holding it down. "Don't."

"No, I'm serious," Steve says, slaps Bucky's hand away and lifts it over his head. He's too close with all of that bare, wet skin. There is a part of Bucky's mind that will always feel an urge to touch Steve, and it is not easily ignored when he is like this. The small swells of his breasts are precious and tempting. Bucky wants to trace them, slowly, with his tongue. Wants to take his time with it, wants to have another chance at licking the water away from his skin, one that will leave a better taste in his mouth than the one prior.

"I'm not gonna put that on," he chuckles instead, when Steve holds it out to him.

Steve stares at it and sighs, "Well, thanks to _somebody_ , it's hardly useful as a shirt at the moment." He wrings it out between their bodies. Bucky holds back a shudder at the lukewarm water trickling over his cock. "Maybe a rag or something." He rubs it along Bucky's chest, playful grin on his face as he waxes on, waxes off like he's washing a car. Bucky can't help the shuddery exhale he gives when Steve's movements bring the cold, wet cloth over his nipple. Steve pauses for a moment, but does not stop. He goes slower, deliberately dragging the shirt over both of his nipples. Bucky's hand snaps to Steve's hip, fingers clenching hard over sodden denim.

"Steve," he breathes, middle finger threading into his belt loop. "What happened to…figuring ourselves out?"

"Um…" Steve leans back, drops the shirt to the floor, runs his hands up Bucky's chest and gives each nipple a caress from his thumbs. "Maybe we can…figure it out as we go along. Because I really want to get naked and kiss you. And you're the only person I've wanted to get naked and kiss for awhile."

"How about this," Bucky says, tracing up his side with his good hand. What he wouldn't give to have use of both hands right now. "When I get out of here, let me take you out to dinner. Someplace nice."

"A date?" Steve murmurs, sliding his hands down to Bucky's abs, looking at him through his dripping fringe.

"Yeah, a proper date," Bucky whispers. "Then we'll talk, yeah? We'll figure ourselves out. Be honest with each other for once."

"I never lied to you, Buck."

"I know." Bucky reaches a hand between them, thumbs open the button on Steve's jeans. He looks up to search for permission, and Steve gives it with his teeth on his lower lip, his eyes wide, his chin dipping towards his chest, slow, once. He pulls down the zipper tab. "But I don't think either of us has told the whole truth, either." He dips his fingers into the slit of Steve's boxers, teases at the slickness between his legs. Steve inhales, shuddery.

"I just—I didn't know how," Steve whispers. His hands grip Bucky's shoulders, fingers digging into Bucky's muscles as Bucky traces his fingers up and down, enjoying the feeling all of that soft, slick skin on the calloused pads of his fingers. Steve utters quietly, something soft and unconscious whimpered into Bucky's neck. "I just…oh, um…Bu-Bucky, mm—ah! _Uh-h-hh_." He sighs breathily.

"Shh, we'll talk later," Bucky whispers. Every one of Steve's lusty sounds is going straight to his groin, cock hardening and testicles drawing up. He sucks a kiss into the hollow of Steve's throat. Steve giggle-moans in a way that seizes both Bucky's heart and his prick. "Get your pants off for me, baby. Get naked."

Steve pulls away slowly, balances with one hand on Bucky's shoulder as he yanks down his pants without going further than absolutely necessary. It takes all three of their hands to get the leg of his pants off his right heel, and both his jeans and boxers are thoroughly turned inside out by the time they are done, but Bucky doesn't care and he can't imagine Steve would either. They end up in a heap in the corner, Steve's red boxers tangled possibly irrevocably with his jeans. Steve straddles him again and reaches over his shoulder, turns the showerhead back on. It's only cold for a moment before a warm rain is pounding down on them from above. Bucky watches a path the water takes, down the side of Steve's neck, along his collarbone and then down, around the curve of his right breast, past his ribs, down into the join of his thigh and hip, and from there between his legs, disappearing amongst blond curls.

"You're beautiful," he murmurs, leans forward to drop a kiss onto his chin. He moves his hand up, cups Steve's breast, brushes his thumb over his peaked nipple. He stares at the contrast—his large, darker fingers against Steve's fair skin, digging in just enough to rise the smallest of swells between his fingers, the weight of that perfect handful. Steve's too blue eyes meet his, pierce him right to the soul, and Bucky leans forward to suck his other nipple. Steve's eyes flutter closed, his head tilts back. He gets his hand around Bucky's erection and strokes him, underhanded.

When he has sucked the nipple in his mouth to tingling oversensitivity, Bucky pulls away, traces his nose over Steve's skin until he finds his earlobe, draws it into his mouth—Steve whimpers, turns his face into Bucky's cheek—and then lets it go to whisper, "Wanna kiss you."

Steve answers by turning his head, twisting until his mouth catches Bucky's. They press back and forth, a mock competition for some meaningless dominance, then Steve opens his mouth and Bucky slides his tongue in along the roof of his mouth at the same time he presses up hard between his legs with two fingers and circles. Steve's thighs reflexively try to twitch together as he moans.

They stay like that for a long time, kissing with too much tongue and loving it, Bucky making Steve shudder with two fingers and Steve returning the favor with his right hand. Bucky's left hand is encased and useless, but Steve keeps it draped over his thigh with a gentle hand on his wrist. The water stays warm, because they would have to sit under it for a lot longer for the hot water in a huge hospital like this to run out—if the industrial-sized water heater was even capable of being exhausted—but Bucky builds up an immunity to it, so he doesn't really even register the heat anymore. All he knows is how warm Steve's mouth is, how hot he is on his fingers. The twitch of his thighs, the soft noises his makes.

When Steve eventually pulls away, he takes Bucky's wrist and pushes his hand further down, and Bucky gets the message—presses two fingers into him. Steve inhales sharply. He's wet in a way that has nothing to do with the water. Bucky glances down to watch his fingers slide in and out.

The rushing of the water does not cover up the sound of Steve swallowing, opening his mouth on a small, breathy gasp. "Do you wanna…?"

"Yeah," Bucky whispers. Tilts his head to brush slow kisses behind Steve's ear. "I do."

Steve stutters out a moan, finds his balance by leaning against the wall behind Bucky's back and gets up on his knees. His hand flutters down between his own legs and into Bucky's lap, and Bucky steadies him with his one functioning hand so that he doesn't overbalance as he takes Bucky's erection in hand, lifts it into the correct position and then slowly sinks down, almost achingly slow to allow himself to adjust. Bucky doesn't press him, doesn't even make any comment about the slick heat he is sinking into—even if it's all he can think about. He gives soft, encouraging groans as Steve makes himself comfortable, watches the way Steve's toes flex up towards the arches of his feet, rubs his hand up and down Steve's side, leans forward and grazes his teeth along Steve's freckled shoulder.

With fingers dug into his shoulders, Steve settles himself fully in Bucky's lap then shifts up and down a few times, barely an inch, but it's enough that Bucky rumbles a moan into Steve's collarbone.

"You feel so good," Steve whispers. Bucky pries his eyes open to look at his face, and Steve's eyes are closed—but his eyebrows are furrowed, his mouth is open, one cheek keeps twitching up almost like he's trying to express his intense arousal with a smile. Bucky moves a hand back and palms his ass, licks water from the hollow of his collarbone. Steve whimpers, "Oh God…" and lifts up, gives a short, stuttery little bounce that makes Bucky groan.

If Bucky had use of all of his limbs, he thinks this is the point at which he would stand up with Steve astride his hips, pin him to the wall and fuck him against it. Steve would wrap his legs tight-tight around Bucky's waist and scream his name and scratch his nails down Bucky's back. Bucky imagines it taking place in the small shower stall at Steve's apartment, really too small for two people—but that just means they would have to press close.

Instead, he's the one leaning back against the shower wall, watching Steve undulate his hips, a steady movement forward and up, bracing himself on Bucky's forearm around his waist and trusting it to keep him up. Bucky doesn't have the hand to do it with, so Steve sneaks a hand down into his own pubic hair and rubs in a rapid back-and-forth movement. Bucky watches, feels a shot of liquid arousal travel up the length of his cock.

"You're so sexy," Bucky tells him emphatically. "And fucking gorgeous, I mean _Jesus_." He moves his arm, justly slightly, to splay his hand on the small of Steve's back, offer him a bit more stability to brace himself on. Steve reaches one hand back, grabs onto his wrist tight, slaps the other hand against the wall behind Bucky's head. His hand catches on the dangling hose of the showerhead and it falls onto their laps, spraying a jet of water up between Steve's legs. He flinches wildly.

He releases his breath on a loud _ah!_ , a staccato almost-scream. And Bucky scrambles to move it— _sorry-sorry!_ Even though it was not his fault—but Steve stops him, shakes his head and reaches behind Bucky to turn down the temperature on the water just slightly, takes the showerhead in his hand and presses it up against himself. His eyes roll back in his head and his shoulders slump forward, overcome. He rasps, "Oh God, oh fuck…fuck-fuck-fuck—" and his thighs tremble. It takes Bucky a moment to realize what he's doing but when he does, it rockets through his body.

"Oh my God," he groans, "look at you, oh my God. Let me—"

Steve lets go willingly, moves his hand instead to Bucky's hair, which he grabs onto tightly when Bucky angles the jet of water just right over him.

"There! _Ah,_ there," Steve says, strangled like all of his breath has hit a roadblock in his throat. "Right there, don't move. Yes, yes." He moves his hips against it, between the jet of water and Bucky's cock, does that thing where he clenches and unclenches, rhythmic and steady. Bucky hears the hand Steve still has braced against the wall begin to slip as he whines, "Buck—ohoh— _ahhh oh God Bucky Bucky—"_

Bucky thrusts up as hard as he can in his current position, sucks Steve's earlobe into his mouth. Steve is a shivery mess above him, all shuddering thighs and curling toes as he bounces in Bucky's lap.

"I think I'm gonna come," Steve says urgently, as if he thinks Bucky actually has to be warned; as if his hand steadily tightening in Bucky's hair is no indication. "Oh God, I'm gonna come—" He tilts his head back, shoulders scrunching up, he gasps—chest heaves and his stomach goes concave—and comes. Bucky feels it, feels the rhythmic contractions of his orgasm, and groans into his shoulder, encourages him through his shaking climax with a hand on his back, gentling him, rubbing up and down.

Steve flutters his hand down by the showerhead. Pants, "That's enough, ow, ow, it's too much."

Bucky drops it immediately, lets it fall towards the floor. Its hose stops it just before it hits the tiles, leaves it to dangle and spray his ankles and the legs of the shower chair. He rubs a thumb into one of the twin dimples on either side of Steve's spine and mumbles, "You okay?"

"Mhm," Steve sighs, "Yeah, I'm great. Never been better. You gonna…?" He moves his hips, thrusts himself back onto Bucky's cock. He makes a guttural noise in the back of his throat. "Mmm, ah, you—you need to come."

"Yeah," Bucky whispers, moving his hips with Steve's. "Can you do that thing?"

"Thing?"

"Where you—you, uh, tighten your—"

"Oh, this thing?" Steve grins and does it and it's like—like he's being stroked by all of Steve's muscles, and Bucky pants against his neck, nods frantically.

"Yes, yes," he whispers, "Ooh fuck, yes, that—" He wraps his arm tighter around Steve, all the way around his waist, tight, pressing all of that warm skin against himself, pants wetly into the pocket of air between their chests. "Oh, ah—ah—should I—should I pull out--?"

"No, I—let me feel you," Steve whispers, cradling the back of Bucky's neck with both hands, "C'mon, come."

Bucky does, moaning into Steve's shoulder. Steve huffs into his shoulder, a soft noise of satisfaction and triumph, then they're both slumping, boneless, against the wall. Bucky wallows in the afters of his climax, dragging kisses over Steve's shoulder and neck and collarbone indiscriminately, thoughtlessly. Allowing himself to float, allowing himself to feel the press of Steve's body, allowing himself to tilt his head up and exchange long, languid kisses with Steve for a long while.

Then Steve gets up and stumbles on shaking legs to the faucet handle, where he turns off the water. There are two towels on a rack next to the sink, and although they were a casualty in the water fight, they are only slightly damp and still useable. He hands one to Bucky and dries himself with the other, running it cursorily over his stomach, chest, under his arms and between his legs. Bucky dries himself more slowly, and continues to do so as Steve exits the room, is gone for a few moments, and comes back—dressed in Bucky's clothes, a pair of shorts and a tee, and carrying a change of clothes for Bucky as well. Natasha brought him all lounge clothes; several pairs of shorts and a few pairs of sweatpants, tanks and tees. The shorts are big on Steve, to the point where it looks like there is at least a foot of slack left on either end after he pulls the waistband tight. In the corner, he wrings out his clothes and hangs them over the sink and the safety rail. Even though Bucky knows the nurses will know something is up, he also knows that it's not as if Steve's drying clothes can bother anyone. This is a private room—just luck of the draw, he figures; that or his parents doing that thing where they throw a hissy fit until they get what they want, and what they wanted was a private room for their son.

Steve helps him get the cast bags off, then helps him get dressed, then helps him get back into bed. Bucky feels tired down to his bones, but in a good way. The oversexed ache of his stomach muscles and thighs is far better than the pain and exhaustion of the last several days.

When he's settled, turned slightly onto his right to avoid putting any pressure on either of his broken limbs, Steve crawls in with him, above the covers, and turns on the television to a low, unobtrusive drone.

Bucky fades in and out of sleep for the rest of the day, only waking up long enough to eat and watch scattered snatches of the Food Network or exchange a few lazy kisses with Steve before he floats back into a doze. Through it all, Steve doesn't leave.

* * *

As it turns out, Bucky has a piece of metal in his arm, a plate, that will stay with him for the rest of his life. Steve unhelpfully chuckles about him never being able to walk through airport security unaccosted again and Bucky threatens to show all of their current friends pictures of the nine months Steve had to wear orthodontic headgear in eighth grade. That shuts Steve up quickly, although he continues making quiet beeping noises every time Bucky goes through a doorway, sniggering under his breath when Bucky glares at him.

Honestly, the only reason Bucky doesn't hold him down until he promises to stop—aside from, y'know, the whole cast situation—is the overwhelming relief he's still swimming in after the resumption of their normal relationship. Also the vivid, bright hope that has made a cozy home for itself in the back of his mind that maybe, just maybe, they have something more building between them.

True to his word, Doctor Banner sees him up and walking—taking slow laps around the floor on Steve's arm, that is, and not just shuffling back and forth between his bed in the bathroom—shortly after taking him off morphine completely, and then brings in the physical therapist to show him how to use his crutches. Although the break in his arm was compound, the break in his leg was simple. Banner explains that, although it may take several months for his arm to heal completely—and that there is always the risk of nerve damage with such a traumatic break, but there is really no way to know that until they take the cast off—his leg will be able to bear weight again within the month.

"But until then," Banner says, something serious and scolding rising into his usually calm eyes, "Absolutely no weight on that leg. Use your crutches and keep it elevated when you're resting. Don't even use it to push yourself up in bed." He glances between the two of them—Bucky and Steve, waiting for his last word before they vacate the hospital room that Bucky has spent the last week and a half of his life in—and adds, "I'm not going to tell you not to have sex, because I know how that usually ends. But find a position that puts the least strain on your injuries as possible. You wouldn't _believe_ how many cases of intimacy-related reinjury we have in a month. I'd prefer if it you weren't one of them."

"You're a good guy, Doc," Bucky tells him earnestly, and Steve rolls his eyes, hefts Bucky's duffle onto his shoulder and begins to push Bucky out of the room.

"Thank you, Doctor Banner," Steve says, resting a hand on Bucky's shoulder. The long sleeve of one of Bucky's zip-ups falls over his knuckles.

"It's no problem," Banner assures, and sees them to the elevator.

"I'm gonna send that guy a fruitbasket," Steve announces to the elevator at large.

Bucky chuckles, "He's a doctor. I think they get fruitbaskets all the time."

"I'm serious," Steve says, and he sounds it, too; voice gone low with rough earnestness. "The nurse, Maria? She told me that if it hadn't been Doctor Banner working on you, you could have lost your arm. Said a lot of doctors would have thought it easier than trying to put it back together again. You broke it in _twenty-eight places_ , Buck."

Bucky, whom until now had not realized the magnitude of the injury, takes in a great inhale of air. "No wonder they had to weld me back together."

Steve's hand shifts on his shoulder, just enough to remind Bucky that it's there, and Bucky reaches up and covers it.

"Bucky?" Steve murmurs.

"Yeah?"

"I know that I have no right to ask this, considering all the bullshit I've put you through, but…please don't die. I don't know how I'm supposed to do this without you."

Bucky thinks that that, right there, might be the closest thing to those three words Bucky is likely to hear from Steve—for now, at least. Maybe not forever, but for now. And that's enough. It's more than enough. In some ways, it's better.

"Can't get rid of me that easily, Rogers," Bucky murmurs. The elevator doors open and Steve wheels him through the hospital atrium to the front doors, where Natasha and Sam are waiting with the car. Steve helps him stand up and takes the wheel chair back into the hospital. As he's doing that, Bucky leans against the car next to Sam and digs out the pack of cigarettes he knows is in the pocket of the jacket he's wearing. He's so eager for one that his hands are almost shaking, but then Steve comes back out and looks at the pack.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't even make any negative noise or expression, but he doesn't have to. He looks at the pack, sighs, and crumples it up. It hurts to throw them in the trash, not just because it was a mostly new pack and it represents roughly seven dollars he'll never have again, but it's feels strangely good.

"Guess that's the first step of stayin' alive," Bucky says, not even hiding the fact that he is saying it right to Steve, rather than everyone. The corner of Steve's mouth quirks up in a smile.  "No more cigarettes."

It's not the first time he's ever said it—but, for once, he's confident in his ability to make it the last. Especially when Steve pops up into his toes, busses their mouths together. Bucky doesn't even have to have his eyes open to know that Sam and Natasha are wearing similar expressions of exasperation and triumph. There's a flavor in the air—an underlying tinge of _At Last_ that is coming from their direction.

The sun is shining and Bucky Barnes is alive and kissing Steve Rogers. Life is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Bucky manually stimulates Steve, which clearly references the existence of Steve's clitoris, but no components of Steve's genitalia are ever mentioned by name, keeping consistent with the rest of the story. Permission and consent are both nonverbal, but stated in the narration.   
> \- Bucky uses his fingers to penetrate Steve vaginally. Steve asks him to do this nonverbally and consent is implied by the narration.  
> \- They engage in vaginal sex without a condom. Consent is stated explicitly.  
> \- Steve lets Bucky use a showerhead to stimulate his clitoris. Again, the word is never used.  
> \- Bucky, via the narration, again notes the appearance of Steve's breasts, but more as a comparison of their skintones than any narration on the shape or size. However, he does describe the way Steve's breast feels in his hand.
> 
> Thank you for reading! It's been a bit of a wild ride, and publishing this story was one of the biggest risks I've taken in my fanfiction career considering the content, but once I wrote it I thought it was important to publish. Probably the two most important people in my life are trans, and although I'm cis, I was told that publishing this story would be a step in the right direction. Obviously, I don't think this story is going to change anything, and the last thing I want is to appear like some kind of 'cis savior', but I like to think that my writing is at least halfway decent, and it's the least I can do to create content of at least some quality that trans people can see themselves represented in.   
> Interest in this story has been way below what I'm used to, but I'm honestly more proud of this than I have been of most everything else I've written. I want my readers to know that I appreciate them more than they can imagine--especially my trans readers. If I've made any mistakes, if there's anything you feel I need to change, please tell me in a comment or my tumblr; I will always listen to you.  
> I hope you enjoyed this story, and once again: Thanks for reading!


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